Page 553 - Media Coverage Book - 75th Aldeburgh Festival 2024
P. 553
16 June 2024
R E V I E W
Aldeburgh’s 1948 Festival Opening Night may
have baffled Britten, plus the best of June’s
classical concerts
A tribute to Britten’s and Pears’s first festival proved a bumpy, episodic mix of old and new – and
the new fared better
Nicholas Kenyon
Trumpeter Matilda Lloyd playing at Snape Maltings CREDIT: Angus Cooke
Britten Sinfonia/1948 Festival Opening Night, Snape
Maltings ★★★☆☆
Born in the ferment of creative renaissance that followed the end of the Second World War, the
Aldeburgh Festival – along with other new initiatives that have lasted like the Edinburgh Festival
and the BBC Third Programme – was a response to the increasing democratisation of classical
music that had gathered pace during the war. The festival was conceived by composer Benjamin
Britten and his partner, the tenor Peter Pears, as an event in the Suffolk seaside town which
provided the setting for Britten’s highly successful opera Peter Grimes, partly as a showcase for
Britten’s own new music performed to his exacting high standards.
