Page 21 - Coverage Book Festival of New BPA

Along with the performances, there are lectures by interesting people like Philip Ross Bullock,
Professor of Russian Literature and Music at Oxford. Tickets start at £5 –
from pushkinhouse.org/festival

• Philip Bullock is a busy man right now because he also features as a lecturer in the
Oxford Lieder Festival event that runs this weekend, entirely online, Feb 27 & 28. It’s a
sort of taster/satellite to the festival proper, which is a sprawling fixture, spread over
several weeks in the autumn and run by pianist Sholto Kynoch. But the weekend has its
own theme: Winter into Spring. And the music follows suit, with things like Schubert’s
great if gloomy song cycle Winterreise sung by Dietrich Henschel with Kynoch to
accompany, and Britten’s haunting cycle Winter Words sung by Joshua Ellicott with
pianist Anna Tilbrook. Tickets from £5: oxfordlieder.co.uk

• Talking of Britten, I’ve just been staring wistfully at pictures of the magical concert hall he
created on the Suffolk coast, Snape Maltings, frosted in snow and ice. The images are on the
website: snapemaltings.co.uk

And it’s worth perusing because this Saturday, Snape is hosting a one-day, online, Festival of
New – so new it’s hard to know what to expect, but everything sounds interesting.

Snape is best known as the home of the Aldeburgh Festival, and something we’re all
hoping/praying will be able to function this summer as it didn’t in 2020. But beyond the festival, it
has a year-round programme with a mission to encourage young artists with fresh ideas. And this
short festival is an example. Crossing genres, it takes in folk, jazz, music-theatre, dance – all
filmed within the precincts of the Maltings, a Victorian industrial complex still in the process of
conversion. Some parts have for decades been repurposed into a chic centre for the arts,
surrounded by huge skies and open marshland.

Others, though, are atmospherically (and chicly) derelict. So it’s a fascinating backdrop for
performance. And the programme running all day Saturday is free to access – though they ask
you to book in beforehand, on the website. Bring an open mind. You never know…