Anna Dennis joins Britten Sinfonia at the Aldeburgh Festival
The no. 64 bus from Ipswich to Aldeburgh is vital to a successful visit to the Aldeburgh Festival if you have decided to go at the last minute and the local hotels are full (and if you want to use public transport as much as possible). The 09.54 picked me up outside the Ufford Park Hotel on Saturday morning (after a rather disconcerting breakfast surrounded by golfers in their strange heavily-checked and loudly-coloured garb) and dropped me off outside Aldeburgh Church in good time for our 11.00am concert there: a full-length, intelligently constructed programme of great intensity, and thus a typical Aldeburgh Festival Saturday morning offering. Not surprisingly, the concert was full. Mezzo Anna Dennis joined our players in Berio’s Chamber Music and Nicholas Maw’s Roman Canticle, the latter a revelation: richly romantic settings of texts by Robert Browning – and what a compelling voice. Britten Sinfonia plans to work more with Anna – she joins us for our BBC Prom on 14 July. Two other highlights for me were Lucy Wakeford’s interpretation of Britten’s Suite for Harp (you can never escape the special frisson of hearing Britten in Aldeburgh Church in the festival he founded in 1948, and given by our eponymous ensemble) and Dallopiccola’s Divertimento in Quattro esercizi, for the curious line-up of flute, clarinet, oboe, viola and mezzo.
We had arrived – players and half of our management team – in Aldeburgh the night before, for a combination of rehearsals and meetings, and to attend the first night of the festival. Britten’s Death in Venice also recently opened at ENO, and, although I haven’t seen it in London yet, I wondered how the two productions would compare, especially when standing outside on the terrace before curtain-up and seeing many major critics arriving from London and abroad. This Aldeburgh production is definitely worth seeing if you can get tickets (further performances are on 11 and 12 June: box-office 01728 687110). Like all Britten’s operas, Death in Venice has disturbing underlying themes, and this production by Yoshi Oida inevitably focuses on the complex (is it complex?) relationship between Aschenbach and Tadzio. The solo singing by Alan Oke and Peter Sidholm was superb, the chorus rather unfocused perhaps, the dancing a little intrusive, but the stark setting, displaying the Snape Maltings brickwork in its entirety, was powerful.
Our colleagues on the staff at Aldeburgh always make us welcome, and David and I enjoyed the post-performance reception, a chance to catch up with many contacts in the music business, who always turn out in force for the first night of the festival. We will be fixing the date of the now annual Aldeburgh Music versus Britten Sinfonia cricket match pretty soon.
On Saturday night, Hannah, our Concerts Officer, went to Faster than Sound at Bentwaters Airbase. Hannah writes: ’imagine an abandoned airbase in the depths of Suffolk, a room packed full with fans in a venue called the Star Wars stage, all dancing and cheering to an orchestra made up of old electronic children’s toys and you begin to get a feel for Faster than Sound. The Modified Toy Orchestra was just one of the acts who performed at Saturday’s event – a festival of electronic music, light installations and interactive performances – other performers including vocal ensemble Exaudi and our friend, composer Tansy Davies. The setting of Bentwaters Airbase was eerie but perfect for this event. The vastness of the airbase allowed the audience to wander from space to space hearing weird and wonderful sounds coming from sources as varying as hidden speakers to electronic trees; and with the beautiful sunset came the opportunity to walk through the illuminated woods. If you went with an open mind then Faster than Sound really was a refreshing and exciting experience offering you a quick peek into the underground world of electronic music and its avid fans.’
A purely personal selection of some of the other brilliant concerts at the Aldeburgh Festival this year would include the tenor Robert Murray’s recital with Malcom Martineau of songs by Brahms, Britten and Schumann and a new set of songs by Emily Hall (Tuesday 19 June at 3pm in Aldeburgh Church); Elephant and Castle, a new opera incorporating film, digital sounds, installations and live performance, ‘to project an urban vision into a rural landscape, opening up the calm of the city on our imagination’ (Wednesday 20 and Thursday 21 June at 9m at Snape), and Masaaki Suzuki’s organ recital of Guilain, Byrd, Purcell and Bach on the magnificent Thamar organ at Framlingham Church (Thursday 21 June at 11.00). At Britten Sinfonia we are looking forward to our collaboration with Masaaki Suzuki next April in a concert featuring Stravinksy’s Pulcinella.
John Bickley
