Page 509 - Aldeburgh Festival 2022 FINAL COVERAGE BOOK

As the farmer telling in sad retrospect his story of falling in love with the woman who rose from the
glacial waters of Carmarthenshire’s Llyn y Fan Fach, baritone Roderick Williams was unfailingly
clear and expressive. Emerging from the instrumental texture as though from the misty depths of
the lake, mezzo soprano Marta Fontanals-Simmons as his bride conveyed an aura of
otherworldliness. The couple’s happiness is real but conditional, for it is she who set the marriage
terms, vowing to return to her watery underworld should she be struck three heart blows. That her
faerie blood gives her sight into the future leads to the misunderstandings which in turn cause the
blows that send her back into the lake, leaving her husband bereft.

Exuberant … Graham Fitkin, Ruth Wall, Clare Hammond and Kathryn Stott play Fitkin’s
compositions. Photograph: BPA

Weaving traditional Welsh folk songs into the mezzo’s lines and bringing a pastoral lyricism to
wind writing invoking the passing seasons, Higgins’ control of his orchestral forces was highly
assured, and combined with an equal instinct for colouristic and atmospheric detail. Martyn
Brabbins conducted with feeling.

In contrast, Graham Fitkin’s new commission, the previous afternoon, had dealt with the all too
contemporary world where public pronouncements and statements are empty of meaning, with
the effect of habituation. Bla, Bla, Bla was the last work in a concert of piano music for two pairs of
duettists: Fitkin, his wife Ruth Wall, Clare Hammond and Kathryn Stott. In earlier pieces of his
from the 80s and 90s, Fitkin’s was the exuberantly driving bass line, but this piece’s engagement
with the concept of Shifting Baseline Syndrome was more than a pun. Donning a head-mic, Fitkin
narrated while he and Wall on synthesisers added layer upon electronic layer of sampling –
including witty snippets of film dialogue – to Hammond’s and Stott’s two live pianos. With
scintillatingly energetic rhythm and some Pet Shop Boys touches, the moments of cacophonous
mayhem spoke volumes.

The Aldeburgh festival continues until 26 June.