Page 275 - Media Coverage Book - 75th Aldeburgh Festival 2024

which classical music festivals once flourished, has changed. In fact, given how little
seeming importance is actually placed on it, we shouldn’t rightly expect to get the level
of work – the quality of compositional work, the quality of performance – that we
actually do.” [interview continues below]

Roger Wright picks his Aldeburgh festival highlights 2015-2024

Les Illumininations (2016) “A circus theatre performance staged by Struan Leslie,
culminating in Britten’s Les Illuminations, performed by Sarah Tynan – an
astonishing feat of musical and physical virtuosity.”

Billy Budd (2017) “Opera North’s semi-staging of Britten’s Billy Budd with Roderick
Williams in the title role, was the first time the opera has been performed in Snape
Maltings – the stunned silence of the close demonstrated its impact.”

Lockdown concerts (2020/21) “With so many venues closed, there was a joy in
presenting concerts to an audience desperate to hear music and by performers who
were moved by the reconnection to the live experience – including Sheku and Isata
Kanneh-Mason, Nicola Benedetti, Jess Gillam and the Chineke! Ensemble.”

Oliver Knussen Day (2022) “A celebration of the late composer/conductor who was a
former director of the festival – and which included the premiere of his unfinished
orchestral Cleveland Pictures.”

Judith Weir: Planet (2024) “Weir’s shimmering and radiant orchestral piece was
premiered to a rapt audience by the Knussen Chamber Orchestra – side by side
students and professional mentors. It’s a piece which will surely last, giving hope for
the future of classical music.”

Wright, 67, began his career in orchestral management and concert planning, working
for the Cleveland Orchestra and then Deutsche Grammophon, before returning to
Britain to become the controller of BBC Radio 3 and then of the Proms too. But in the
decade Wright has been in Snape it has sometimes seemed that as much of his energy
and imagination has been taken up with administration and developing the real estate
as with the artistic side of things. Concert planning and programming are still what he
likes doing most of all, he says, but nonetheless he has found himself running an
operation that employs almost 200 people.

“I was really clear that I’d never be called ‘festival director’,” he says. “My job is being
chief executive of the whole organisation. Yes, I’ve got a hand on the programming
tiller, but the spirit of the festival is to have particular people programming different
parts of it, as it was when Imogen Holst programmed parts during Britten’s lifetime,
and when John Woolrich and Tom Adès were working together [in the late 2000s]. And
the people I’ve invited here – Barbara Hannigan, Thomas Larcher, Patricia
Kopatchinskaja, Roderick Williams, and, this year [violinist] Daniel Pioro and [cellist]
Alban Gerhardt, have been the sort of perfect instrumentalists to be able to say: ‘Let’s
just plan something together.’”