Page 291 - Media Coverage Book - 75th Aldeburgh Festival 2024
P. 291
26 June 2024
The Aldeburgh Festival turns
75 and remains a glory of the
British musical year
• John Freeman
• June 26, 2024
Performance of Peter Grimes on Aldeburgh Beach at Aldeburgh Festival (via Britten Pears
Art)
Over the eleven months between June 1948 and May 1949, RAF aircraft, which in the recent
war had operated out of airfields near the coast of East Anglia, had been moved to bases in
the British occupation zone in Germany. This time, they had crossed the North Sea not to
bomb Hitler’s Berlin but to save it from Stalin’s blockade. Meanwhile, underneath the RAF’s
flightpaths in the small fishing town of Aldeburgh, the composer Benjamin Britten – a
pacifist who had spent the early war years in the US – and his partner Peter Pears were
getting their first festival of music and the arts off the ground.
