Page 264 - Media Coverage Book - 75th Aldeburgh Festival 2024

glimpse into Schubert’s world, his circle of friends and the context in which the pieces were heard,
without the limitation of just one musical line-up.
Sometimes altering the original programme can enhance its effect, allow us to seek new meaning.
This year at Aldeburgh, we will recreate the festival’s first-ever concert from 1948, but will replace
the new work then (God’s Grandeur by Martin Shaw) with the first performance of a new trumpet
concerto by Robin Haigh (one of our Young Artists Programme alumni). Thus, new talent can both
learn from the old and inform it.

The tenor Mark Padmore at the 2019 Aldeburgh Festival CREDIT: Marcus Roth

We are also giving our audience the chance to experience a wonderful programme from 1961 when
Rostropovich and Britten gave the premiere of Britten’s Cello Sonata (alongside Debussy, Schubert
and Schumann), and marking the anniversary with heritage bellringing in our three festival
churches (but have not tempted fate by organising the Aldeburgh ballooning events of past years!).

These days the big repertory pieces, such as romantic symphonies, are usually in the second half of
the concert: contemporary audiences expect an evening to build to a dramatic conclusion.
However, when I ran the BBC Proms, I planned a programme recreating that in which Mahler’s
Fifth was premiered: it was placed in the first half, which stemmed from an era when Mahler’s
symphonic output was less fashionable. After the interval were Schubert songs and a Beethoven
overture. As that day would have been Stockhausen’s 80th birthday, we inserted the Proms
premiere of his orchestral piece Punkte. I feared that no one would be left in the Albert Hall after
the interval, but the audience got the idea and were up for the challenge.

Yet recreations can be too easy a hook for lazy programmers and there is no excuse for recreating a
bad programme. Mahler conducting his fourth symphony followed by a performance of the same
piece, when he presented it for the first time in Amsterdam, would have been fascinating to hear at
the time, with no recordings available with which to get to know it. But without the man himself
there is no reason to recreate it now – the music is so familiar that it does not need a repeat
hearing as it did when it was brand new.