Page 277 - Media Coverage Book - 75th Aldeburgh Festival 2024

working in a very different climate from the one he himself experienced more than a
decade ago. He dismisses the idea that the character of the Proms has changed
fundamentally. People find one or two concerts in the eight-week festival that they don’t
like, he says, and therefore the whole thing must have “gone to hell in a handcart”.

Isata and Sheku Kanneh-Mason perform at one of festival’s socially distanced concerts. Photograph: Beki
Smith/Sam Murray-Sutton

He insists that the Proms remains a remarkable and thriving musical institution. “I’ve
always been a glass half full rather than glass half empty person. You’ve got to say, look,
there are 5,000 people pitching up to hear this concert, and it’s all on radio, and online,
and much of it is on television. That’s an enormous number of people. And there are
cheap tickets available for thousands. What is there not to celebrate about all of that?”

Commissions were an important element in Wright’s work at the Proms, and he has
ensured they have always been prominent at Aldeburgh too; this year, for instance,
composers Unsuk Chin and Weir are featured musicians. “We all need to keep putting
on lots of new music. There are more than 20 first performances in the festival this
year,” he says. “That’s what’s so extraordinary again about the audience here – they
have been trained over the years and they trust the brand of the festival. They trust the
organisation. Yes, they will fall lovingly into the arms of Schubert’s Trout Quintet, but
they will also let you give them Messiaen’s Catalogue d’Oiseaux played across 24 hours,
or a day of Helmut Lachenmann.”

It is clear that when he leaves Snape, Wright will be leaving a very healthy musical
culture behind him. But beyond spending the summer in the US at the festivals at
Tanglewood and Marlboro, he insists that he has no idea what he is going to do next. He
is unlikely to be short of offers, and he is hardly thinking of retiring – “Well, nobody
retires these days, do they? My wife said to me, ‘So you’re graduating’, which I actually
think is rather nice, rather than retiring.”