Page 606 - Media Coverage Book - 75th Aldeburgh Festival 2024

However, picking himself up from the floor, checking that no damage was done to his cello,
unfazed and to a big round of applause, he gingerly took to his new seat (Aldeburgh’s stage
crew were quick off the mark!) and the performance restarted as if nothing had happened.
Judith Weir, one of the composers-in-residence at this year’s festival, attended the concert. I
wondered what passed through her mind.

Anyhow, Distance and Enchantment takes the form of two meditations on traditional
folksongs played together without a break handsomely performed by the pianist and string
trio of The Nash Ensemble. A brilliant lot, really! Therefore, ‘The Dark-Eyed Gypsy’ from
Northern Ireland tells of a woman who, of her own volition, leaves her comfortable home to
roam the unknown world with a band of gypsies while in ‘A Ghaoil, Leig Dhachaigh Gum
Mhàthair Mi’ from South Uist, Scotland, the story surrounds a young girl who wanders a
little too far from home on a dark night and is stolen away by the fairies.

Harbouring a passionate charm, Mozart’s Piano Quartet No.1 has delighted audiences time
and time again and more than delighted the packed house in the Britten Studio. The first
movement opens with a stern musical ‘call to order’ by all four instruments playing in unison
with the second movement comprising a beautifully-expansive melody filled with a quiet
dignity and a tinge of sadness seemingly transporting one to a shimmering and intimate scene
from one of Mozart’s operas while in the fast and final movement, Mozart moves one into the
brightness of the day thus bringing the quartet to a fitting conclusion filled with endlessly
inventive melodies, joy and warmth that is, I guess, the composer’s trademark!

The first of Britten's three ‘Parables for Church Performance’, the scenario of Curlew River is
based on Kanze Motomasa’s sad and emotional play, Sumidagawa, a hauntingly-moving
story about a mother’s search for her long-lost son who nervously finds out that after he has
been abducted he’s later found dead. A fascinating story, Britten saw it a couple of times
during his visit to Japan with Peter Pears in early 1956 in Tokyo’s Suidobashi Noh Theatre
while Britten’s librettist, William Plomer, who lived in Japan during the 1920s and who
encouraged Britten to explore Japanese theatre, transferred the traditional setting of this 15th-
century play to the medieval Fenlands of East Anglia thereby presenting it as a Mystery
Play.

A major undertaken for Britten, he decamped to Venice for six weeks to work on Curlew
River finding this city (lovingly dubbed ‘La Serenissima’) one of the few places other than
Suffolk where he felt relaxed enough and in the right environment to compose. On its first
performance in Orford parish church, dedicated to St Bartholomew, at the 1964 Aldeburgh
Festival, the critic of The Times described Curlew River as ‘possibly the start of a new,
perhaps the most important, stage of Britten’s creative life’. Completing the Noh trilogy
are The Burning Fiery Furnace (based on the Old Testament story of Nebuchadnezzar and
the three Israelites) and The Prodigal Son (based on the parable from St Luke’s Gospel).

Directed by Deborah Warner, assisted by Isabelle Kettle, this new staging at Blythburgh
church, dedicated to the Holy Trinity and suitably dubbed the ‘Cathedral of the Marshes’, is a
co-production with Britten Pears Arts and Ad Lib Productions and one of the highlights of
the 75th Aldeburgh Festival which has been a runaway success from start to finish.

Interestingly, there’s no conductor in the presentation of Noh drama. Britten, of course, was
music director for the original production with pianist Viola Tunnard working alongside him
while Peter Pears took the lead role in each work. Scored for small instrumental forces and an