Page 207 - Media Coverage Book - 75th Aldeburgh Festival 2024

British music, much of it rarely heard.

For a little too long before Wright’s arrival there, Aldeburgh catered to the wrong sort of elite:
audiences whose tastes were so narrow that large acreages of the classical canon – the acreages not
regarded sympathetically by the festival’s founder, Benjamin Britten, and his partner Peter Pears –
were simply not considered for inclusion in the festival. Famously, Britten was deeply jealous of his
British rivals, which meant for years that his works (excellent though many of them are) remained
almost the sole representative of his generation in our national music. Wright has made absolutely
sure to enrich the reputation of the festival not just by including works by composers for which the
founder had a haughty disdain, but by including a wide range of contemporary composers, too.

This year marks the 75th festival – it began in 1948 but was derailed by the pandemic – and one of
its focuses is the music of Judith Weir, Master of the King’s Music, who last week celebrated her
70th birthday. On June 16, the pianist Steven Osborne has a recital in which he will perform three
of her pieces, as well as the last two Schubert sonatas. Then the next day, the justly reprieved BBC
Singers and the Castalian String Quartet will perform her oratorio blue hills beyond blue hills,
settings of words by the Scottish poet Alan Spence and the Japanese poets Issa and Basho.

There is another taste of the East in a concert on June 13 comprising only British works. The 150th
anniversary of the birth of Gustav Holst is being widely commemorated around the country, and
Aldeburgh is presenting two of his works that reflect his own fascination with the Orient. The first
is his Choral Hymns from the Rig Veda, based on a Sanskrit text; the second is a rare and much
awaited performance of his short opera Sāvitri, based on the same text. Kathryn Rudge will sing
the title role, with Anthony Gregory and Ross Ramgobin the other soloists. The Pagrav Dance
Company also feature in the production, as do the Britten Sinfonia Voices, and the Sinfonia itself,
conducted by Olivia Clarke.

'A centre of artistic excellence': A performance at the Aldeburgh Festival CREDIT: Matt Jolly

The concert also includes Nicholas Daniel performing a work of which he is unquestionably the
finest living interpreter, the Oboe Concerto in A Minor by Vaughan Williams – a composer who
encountered the founder’s deep, and preposterous, disapproval. Appropriately, there will be