Page 515 - Aldeburgh Festival 2022 FINAL COVERAGE BOOK

two soloists and medium sized orchestra. Cultural difference and tolerance is at
the centre of a story about a human who falls in love with a fairy encountered

on Carmarthenshire’s Llyn y Fan Fach. She will be the farmer’s bride on condition

he agrees not to strike her three heart blows. But a suspicious, unwelcoming
community and misunderstandings of her clairvoyance conspire to ruin the

marriage and the fairy returns with her children to the lake. Musical

characterisation is deftly woven into the score, allowing gentle, keening lines for
Roderick Williams’ warm baritone, while more angular contours bring sharp

differentiation for Marta Fontanals-Simmons’ cooler mezzo. Only when singing in
Welsh did Higgins provide a flowing lyricism rooted in Welsh folk song,

culminating in a beautifully expressive version of ‘Suo Gân’. There was plenty to

enjoy in the musical imagery of a dark lake, love’s ripening, a rustic wedding and
a procession of farm animals to the marital home. Over the work’s forty minutes,

the BBC NOW played with its customary polish and sensitivity, beginning and
ending with ominous timbres to evoke the depths of the lake.

A sense of salt spray was vividly captured at the start of the evening with a

breezy account of Grace Williams’ Sea Sketches, a five-movement work for string
orchestra directly inspired by the Glamorganshire coastline near her parent’s

home at Barry. Written in her London flat in 1944, its craftsmanship is readily

apparent and demonstrates a violinist’s understanding of string textures,
something recognised by Oxford University Press when they published the work

six years later. The work variously evokes blustering winds, small boats rocking

in tranquil waters, fogbound craft, invigorating ‘Breakers’ and finally a
languorous movement of vessels under a starlit sky. It was given an affectionate

performance, the BBCNOW exhibiting fabulously silky string playing.
Equally polished was the orchestra’s reading of Britten’s rarely performed Suite

of English Folk Tunes, subtitled ‘A Time There Was’. A late work from 1974, it’s a

show piece in many ways for the orchestra, where every instrument has its
moment in the sun. Menacing drums and brass chorales coloured ‘Cakes and Ale’,

harp and strings caught the ear in ‘The Bitter Withy’, while zesty woodwinds and
muted trumpets brought pageantry to ‘Hankin Booby’. Violins alone glittered in

the jig that is ‘Hunt the Squirrel’ and a plaintive cor anglais roamed the

elegiac ‘Lord Melbourne’ – the only folk melody Britten sets in its entirety.