Page 138 - Aldeburgh Festival 2022 FINAL COVERAGE BOOK

music, including a first performance of a Britten Pears Arts
commission by young Irish composer and performer Aine Mallon.

Although Roger is clearly delighted that the Festival is back, he is at
pains to point out that music has been going on at Snape in stop-start
fashion throughout the pandemic.

“The fact that we have just been given what amounts to the ‘Concert
Hall of Year award’ reflects on what the talented team here have been
doing during the pandemic," he says. "Every time the starting gun has
been fired, so to speak, we have managed to get some live music, live
performances out there.

"We have the advantage of this amazing site, the fact that people are
arriving in their own bubble and we, collectively, had a determination to
carry on doing things. This has allowed people to remain in contact
with the site and to maintain the habit of concert-going in between
lockdowns, so they have never had to be completely starved of live
music.”

It's led to a situation where the Aldeburgh Festival can return this year
with a programme bursting with new music commissioned for this
year’s event as well as for the postponed festivals in 2020 and 2021.

The 2022 Aldeburgh Festival opens on June 3 with the premiere
of Violet , a new opera from rising composer Tom Coult with a libretto
by playwright Alice Birch. This was to have opened the 2020 festival,
but it finally gets to be staged this year, much to Roger’s delight.