Page 33 - Aldeburgh Festival 2022 FINAL COVERAGE BOOK

Artist Programme, now expanded into year-round projects and events, and a day of
concerts will mark what would have been the 70th birthday of composer and former

Aldeburgh artistic director Oliver Knussen.

“With these anniversaries and everything else, we felt the programme could become

very congested,” says Roger Wright, chief executive of Britten Pears Arts, which runs
the festival. “So next year’s festival will be three weeks rather than two, as it was for
a short period in the late 1960s.”

Festival co-founders Benjamin Britten, left, and Peter Pears, c1965 © Popperfoto via Getty
Images

There is no other festival quite like Aldeburgh. Situated on the windswept east coast

of England, it looks out over the grey expanse of the North Sea and the flat Suffolk
fens. In the stillness of this never-ending landscape, Britten found his ideal place to

live and work, and on a misty night it is still possible to imagine the anti-hero
fisherman of his opera Peter Grimes stalking the shore. Britten’s spirit and the

ambitions he had for music here continue to cast a potent spell.

No festival, though, can afford to stand still. In 2022, Aldeburgh will present the

highest number of premieres of new music in its history, including 19 commissions
from composers such as Laura Bowler, Francisco Coll, Bushra El-Turk, Colin

Matthews, Mark-Anthony Turnage and Tom Coult, whose opera Violet gets its
delayed first performance.

Featured artists include violinist Nicola Benedetti, playing baroque music and

Messiaen’s Quatuor pour la fin du temps, cellist Laura van der Heijden, the Doric
String Quartet and Mark Simpson, clarinettist and composer of the moment,

following his heaven-storming Violin Concerto earlier this year.