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The 61st Aldeburgh Festival 13^th to 29^th June, 2008: Previewed by Anne Ozorio (AO)


“It’s not my ears that do the hearing”- György Kurtág

Next year, Pierre-Laurent Aimard takes over from Thomas Adès as Artistic Director of the Aldeburgh Festival.  György Kurtág links them both, so there’s a lovely continuity about this year’s Festival. Aimard has been closely associated with Kurtág, and Adès has been profoundly influenced by him, both as a composer and pianist.  It’s good that this year’s Aldeburgh Festival features Kurtág’s music so prominently.

Indeed, Kurtág and his wife and muse Marta will be present at the Festival. They may be in their eighties, but they are energetic, enthusiastic musicians who are always a joy to experience.  They’ll be playing excerpts from Játékok and the Bach Transcriptions, on 19^th June.  This promises to be a highlight of the Festival, since the concert will include the striking HiPartita for Solo Violin, played by Hiromi Kikuchi, with whom they have worked closely for many years.  The following day, Aimard plays more from Játékok, together with excerpts from Bach’s Kunst der Fuge.

One of the pleasures of Aldeburgh is that it provides opportunities to hear modern music in context, the better to appreciate it. “It’s not my ears that do the hearing” said Kurtág.  We listen with hearts and minds.  The keynote evening concert that opens this year’s Festival on Saturday 14^th June, includes Kurtág’s Ligatura.  Aimard and the Britten Sinfonia will be playing it, embedded in three centuries of western music, for the concert starts with Hadyn and ends with Mozart, visiting Schoenberg, Webern and Charles Ives along the way. The following evening, Adès conducts the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, with whom he and the Festival have been so closely associated.  Aimard and Adès also connect through Ligeti.  Adès will conduct Ligeti’s With Pipes, Drums and Fiddles, written for Katalin Károli, who will be singing it. Adès own, much loved Living Toys will feature too, and perhaps one of the most famous of Kurtág’s vocal works, Messages of the late Miss R V Troussova.  Adès will be joined by Steven Isserlis in a performance  on 17^th June, of various pieces by Kurtág, Debussy and Ravel, and a completely new work for piano and cello, title as yet unannounced, by Adès himself.

Kurtág was fascinated by Machaut’s Messe de Notre Dame, so it will be well worth making an effort to hear it performed by Marcel Pérès and Ensemble Organum, the acclaimed French early music ensemble, especially as the performance will be taking place at the atmospheric Blythburgh Church. Hearing the Mass on a summer afternoon, on the hill overlooking this lovely landscape, will be a special occasion indeed. There will also be performances by the Gabrieli Consort and players, under Paul McCreesh (Purcell and Britten, 18^th June) and Exaudi (Byrd, Xenakis and Rihm, 20^th June).

This Festival will also be a treat for cellists, and those who love the instrument. Rohan de Saram will be playing the remarkable Xenakis pieces, Kottos and Nuits.  He is one of their greatest exponents, and any opportunity to hear him perform these shouldn’t be missed (20^th June, together with Exaudi).  Peter Wispelwey, the baroque cellist, will perform all the Bach Cello Suites over two concerts on 24^th June. This, too, will be a rewarding experience.  Isserlis will be appearing once with Adès, and Jean-Guihen Queyras twice, first on 21^st June in Schubert and Mozart, then in Britten’s Cello Symphony with The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, on 29^th June.

Usually Alfred Brendel features prominently at Aldeburgh, but he’s now semi-retired, though he’ll never be forgotten at Snape and its environs. The tradition of excellence is assured when pianists of the calibre of Aimard, Imogen Cooper, and Stephen Kovacevich appear – not forgetting Adès and the Kurtágs themselves! Other important performers attracted to Aldeburgh include Tabea Zimmermann, Martin Fröst and Antje Weithaas.

Forty years ago, when Benjamin Britten was still active at the Festival, he walked out of Harrison Birtwistle’s Punch and Judy. Only he and Peter Pears know exactly what he said, but there were witnesses who saw him with a sour expression, withdraw to a side room for a stiff drink.  Yet that is part of the Aldeburgh ethos. Britten may not have liked Punch and Judy, but he recognised that music changes and grows. This Festival showcases Birtwistle, whose music has developed greatly so that  he’s now perhaps the most significant living British composer.  On 27^th June, Birtwistle’s recent Tree of Strings will receive its first UK Performance. It’s very new, first performed on 28^th April at the Wittener Musik Tage. It’s an ambitious work, lasting 30 minutes, but if any ensemble can do the piece justice, it would be the Arditti Quartet, who pre-eminence in the genre is unrivalled. The concert will also feature Birtwistle’s arrangements of Bach – another nod to the Aldeburgh principle of combining state of the art with ancient tradition. Birtwistle’s Night’s Black Bird will open another keynote concert, on 21^st June.  Oliver Knussen will conduct the Philharmonia Orchestra in another interesting programme which juxtaposes Birtwistle with Schumann and Frank Bridge, and ends with Bartók’s Suite from the Miraculous Mandarin. The Festival brochure calls this “a violent urban thriller of a ballet”. What a programme this should prove to be!

In most years at Aldeburgh, there are new operas by relatively unknown composers. This years’ is An Ocean of Rain, by Yannis Kyriakides with a libretto by Daniel Danis. It’s about three women who go to Haiti to do charity work and meet a girl who murdered a sex tourist. Those who can’t make the performance at Aldeburgh on 13^th June might catch it at the Almeida Opera Festival in London on 10^th July.  Whether it will abide, like Birtwistle’s Punch and Judy, I have no idea, but Aldeburgh makes such things possible.

What makes Aldeburgh unique however, is the way the music is integrated into the world around it. The festival showcases serious music, seriously well performed to very high standards. Yet it does so in an atmosphere far removed from the formality of conventional performance.  You don’t wear a tux unless you really want to, (it’s often too hot) and you don’t come here to show off and be “seen”.  Aldeburgh isn’t London. Its relative remoteness has advantages.

These days we hear so much about the “elitist” image of classical music, but for Britten, it was fundamentally important to mix music with “normal” life.  That’s why The Festival includes events like open air installations, walks through the countryside and beaches, and community music.  There are art exhibitions, talks and films. In addition to big name performers there’s great emphasis on student performance and community participation. Kurtàg might have come up with the phrase “It’s not my ears that do the hearing”, but Britten would have instinctively understood.

Anne Ozorio

Anne Ozorio will report on eight concerts from the festival and the Aldeburgh Festival web site is Here [Ed]

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