Page 591 - Media Coverage Book - 75th Aldeburgh Festival 2024

24 June 2024
BBC SSO / ALDEBURGH FESTIVAL

Posted on 24th June 2024 by VoxCarnyx

nape Maltings Concert Hall, Suffolk

While some festivals around the UK have modelled themselves on the Aldeburgh Festival –
marriages of off-the-beaten-track location, top-level programming and the kudos of having a
major composer as its central icon – none can quite match the idyllic campus-style
infrastructure of this 75-year-old Suffolk event, founded by the late Benjamin Britten and
now part of a wider musical initiative – performance, coaching and research – that extends
throughout the year.

Last week the 800-seater concert hall at the heart of the swiftly remodelled Snape Maltings
complex played host to the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, signing off for its summer
holidays with two magnificent programmes under chief conductor Ryan Wigglesworth.

Getting there wasn’t all plain sailing. A cancelled Avanti Glasgow-to-London train left a
majorly extended orchestra jostling for seats on a later service, consequently missing their
planned Ipswich connection and having to purchase new tickets as a result. Not that it showed
the following evening in a challenging opening programme of music by Judith Weir, Britten
and Mahler.

Not even in the second half, when the alarming announcement was made that second oboist
Mary James had suffered a serious accident – catching her fingers in a heavy metal door
during the interval and requiring hospital treatment – and that between them principal oboist
Alexandra Hilton and cor anglais player James Horan would “cover the missing notes” in
Mahler’s Fourth Symphony, which they did with astonishing skill.

Indeed, the Mahler turned out to be the highpoint of the evening, Wigglesworth considerably
more relaxed with his orchestra than in recent months, stepping back from the fray to allow