Page 27 - Media Coverage Book - 75th Aldeburgh Festival 2024

19 December 2023

75th Aldeburgh Festival: Judith Weir's Blond Eckbert, Britten's Curlew River,
Sumidagawa & more
Labels: Aldeburgh, preview

The plans for next year's Aldeburgh Festival have been announced, and it turns out that
2024 is one of those years full of celebratory numbers. 2024 will be the 75th Aldeburgh
Festival, composer Judith Weir's 70th year, 60 years since the premiere of
Britten's Curlew River and Roger Wright's last festival after 10 years of being CEO. So,
plenty to celebrate then.

The festival opens with a new production of Judith Weir's 1994 opera Blond Eckbert, a co-production
with English Touring Opera that will be directed by Robin Norton-Hale and conducted by Gerry
Cornelius. Judith Weir is one of the festival's featured musicians and there will be performances of her
music by BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Ryan Wigglesworth, pianists Rolf Hind and Steven
Osborne, the Nash Ensemble, Aldeburgh Voices, and Tenebrae, the BBC Singers perform
her oratorio blue hills beyond blue hills, soprano Clare Booth performs the mini grand opera King
Harald's Saga, the Leonkoro Quartet premieres of her second string quartet, The Spaniard, and Ryan
Wigglesworth and the Knussen Chamber Orchestra premiere Planet, written specially for the
orchestra.

Claire van Kampen directs a new production of Britten's Curlew River in Blythburgh Church,
conducted by Audrey Hyland with tenor Ian Bostridge, baritone Peter Braithwaite, bass-baritone Sir
Willard White and singers and alumni from the Britten Pears Young Artists programme. There will also
be a chance to see the Japanese Noh play, Sumidagawa (Sumida River) that inspired Britten and the
performance will be preceded by a new English re-telling of the story by Xanthe Gresham Knight.

The festival will feature a total of 23 world premieres (of which 10 are Britten Pears Arts commissions)
from composers including Lara Agar, Tom Coult, Graham Fitkin, Robin Haigh, Joanna Ward, Judith
Weir and Ryan Wigglesworth, plus three UK premieres of music by Unsuk Chin and Thomas
Larcher. Made in Snape is a strand of new music created on residencies at Snape Maltings by a wide
range of contemporary musicians including Xhosa Cole, Mark Sanders and Jason Singh; Emily Levy
and Mella Faye; Holy Other; Tom Rogerson, Liam Byrne and Clare O’Connell.