Happiness is ...

More on Stimmung here and Jordi Savall here.
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Live the dream at Snape Maltings

Fancy a duplex in the middle of beautiful countryside, yet across the road from one of the world's finest concert halls? Well fancy no more. You can live the dream at Snape Maltings.

I have already written about the inspirational new creative campus at Snape that builds on the artistic vision of Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears. As part of this redevelopment some of the redundant Maltings buildings are being converted into residential properties. In my header visual the concert hall is on the left, the new creative campus in the center, and the new properties are on the right. Below are two visualisations of the properties.


The first eighteen properties went on sale off plan late last year. As I write just three are still available. They are all two bedroom duplexes. The cheapest is £425,000 (US$875,000), the most expensive is £550,000 (US$1.13million). This is for a property with one parking space and a six mile drive to the nearest shops and railway station. Jet set conductors and other wealthy readers can find more details of the properties here.


Now playing - Benjamin Britten's The Building of the House op. 79 with Simon Rattle conducting the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. The 1967 Aldeburgh Festival opened with a visit from Queen Elizabeth and a concert in the new Snape Maltings Concert Hall which included this overture, composed to celebrate the ‘building of the house’. The music is as lively as the wonderful acoustics in which it was first performed. The version performed in 1967 was for chorus and used an English text of Psalm 127 adapted by Imogen Holst, but there are alternative versions which omit the chorus.

Now read how about the rebuilding of the house.
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Stockhausen's Stimmung at summer Snape

A late night performance of Stimmung is one of the highlights of the 2008 Aldeburgh Summer Festival. It will be sung by London Voices as part of the Faster Than Sound experimental music festival within a festival. The evocative photo above was kindly provided by fellow blogger Richard Friedman. He took it at the October 1971 performance of Stimmung in the Théâtre de la Ville, Paris by the group that commissioned it, Collegium Vocale Köln. Richard is also a fellow webcaster, check out his Music From Other Minds on KALW 91.7 FM San Francisco. The footer photo was taken by me at the 2007 Faster Than Sound. Stockhausen's music is just one of many delights at the 2008 Aldeburgh Festival which runs from 13th to 29th June, here are some of the others:

* World premiere of a new opera An Ocean of Rain by Yannis Kyriakides directed by Cathie Boyd.
* Featured composer György Kurtág and his wife Marta in recital.
* Pierre-Laurent Aimard plays The Art of Fugue and conducts the Britten Sinfonia.
* Ensemble Organum sing Machaut.
* Steven Isserlis and Thomas Adès play music by Kurtág, Debussy, Janáček and a new work by Adès.
* I Fagiolini sing Byrd.
* Premiere of John Woolrich's Violin Concerto.

As I've said here before, contemporary music is flourishing in Aldeburgh. This is due to adventurous and challenging programming. And Aldeburgh is not frightened of controversy. They proudly feature the 2007 premiere of their multi-media opera Elephant and Castle on the front of their new brochure, in confident defiance of a one star Guardian review from a grumpy Andrew Clements. Here are the facts that prove music has to be an adventurous experience:

In the past twelve months Aldeburgh Music has:
* Presented more than 150 concerts and events, including music, opera, dance, visual arts, public masterclasses and talks.
* Sold 91,000 concert tickets.
* Involved 8000 people in 250 Aldeburgh Education project days.
* Nurtured musical talent from around the world through the Britten-Pears Young Artists Programme which has more than 300 alumni.
* Started building its visionary new music campus.
* Involved more than 200 established musicians in Aldeburgh Residencies.
* Coached 25 of the region's finest young musicians through the Aldeburgh Young Musicians scheme.

As Benjamin Britten said, music does not exist in a vacuum.


Header photo (c) Richard Friedman 2008, footer (c) On An Overgrown Path 2008. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Britten's reed-fringed path

'Snape is a straggling village just off the road to Aldeburgh. The River Alde, broad and marshy in its lower reach, becomes a small stream above the sluice at Snape Bridge. In 1938 the Garrett family was still operating the big Maltings by the old bridge, and lorries, barges and railway goods wagons came and went. Britten's Mill stood about half a mile north of this activity, in Snape village proper, but in a few minutes he could be walking on the reed-fringed path that wound past the Maltings towards Iken Marshes, with only the wildlife of the estuary for company' - from Benjamin Britten, A Biography by Humphrey Carpenter.

The photo was taken on Monday (Dec 3) from the reed-fringed path through Iken Marshes that Britten used to walk. The viewpoint is a mile downstream from Snape, the white speck on the horizon in the centre is the roof of the Maltings concert hall.
Photo (c) On An Overgrown Path 2007. Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

New music - Snape Skyscape

The photo above was taken a few hours before last night's world premiere of Giorgio Battistelli's Snape Skyscape. Orford Church can be seen on the skyline. It was here that all three of Britten's Church Parables were given their first performances and recorded, as was his children's opera Noye's Fludde. Snape Skyscape was a commission from Aldeburgh Music, and it was premiered in Snape Maltings, which is just out of my picture to the left, by the Britten-Pears Orchestra conducted by Martyn Brabbins. In his programme note the composer explains:

'The central idea of Snape Skyscape has nothing to do with 'descriptive' or 'programme' music. It's simply about impressions received during my stay in Aldeburgh, a place rich in history that has a special kind of energy. Snape Skyscape can be understood as a small musical fresco, in which the energies of the natural landscape and those of intellectual ceativity intetwine and feed into each other. It's a personal expression of what Aldeburgh means to me. The translation of colour, of the wind, of the sea, into fractal forms inevitably loses something, but it nevertheless conveys some form of meaning.'

Although Giorgio Battistelli distances the work from 'programme' music, Snape Skyscapes is a dazzling invocation of 'pure' Aldeburgh with fractals from Peter Grimes and the brutal North Sea coast. But this is not a backward-looking tribute to a dead master. Paul Griffiths has written 'the past is not a path we and our predecessors have travelled but a labyrinth, and a labyrinth forever in flux.' Britten's music was forever in flux, and post-Britten Aldeburgh, thankfully, remains in flux through Aldeburgh Music's visionary work with new music. Their latest commission, Giorgio Battistelli's Snape Skyscape, is a succession of shimmering musical fractals that are, again, forever in flux. It speaks with a unique voice. But it is a voice relevant both to Britten's own special soundscape, and that of other composers, such as Boulez and Cage, who were writing flux, in the form of chance, into their music elsewhere in the labyrinth.

Snape Skyscape is scored for large orchestra including a range of percussion (a fractal of Prince of the Pagodas), celeste and sampler. It was delivered with persuasive advocacy by the young players of the Britten-Pears Orchestra and Martyn Brabbins. Intelligent marketing resulted in a good, but by no means full, house in deepest rural Suffolk on an autumn evening. Thankfully no embarassing lectures from the podium to introduce the new work, and no Pastoral Symphony to soften the blow of new music. It is a comment on the power of Giorgio Battistelli's (right) new music that the core repertoire that followed seemed anti-climactic. Another work from the labyrinth, Walton's First Symphony from 1935, sounded with much circumference and little circle in the second half.

Now read more about that 'special kind of Aldeburgh energy'.
Programme note with thanks to Aldeburgh Music. Giorgio Battistelli's music is published by Casa Ricordi. Header photo (c) On An Overgrown Path 2007. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Happy birthday Sir Colin

Sir Colin Davis is 80 years old today. The following post, which I first ran last October, says it all.

Difficult to find the superlatives to describe last night's concert at Snape Maltings with Sir Colin Davis (left) conducting The Combined Orchestra of The Guildhall School of Music and the Royal Academy of Music. This brought together the top players from two of London's (and the world's) leading music conservatoires in a vast orchestra (14 cellos and 12 basses!) that filled the Maltings capacious stage and scarcely left Sir Colin room to make his way to the rostrum. Sir Colin revels in working with young players (his 2005 Prom with an orchestra drawn from the Royal Academy and Juilliard Schools was a highlight of the season) and he has worked regularly at both the Royal Academy and Guildhall.

The programme was Berloz's Overture Béatrice et Bénédict (a Davis speciality), Tchaikovsky's Fantasy Overture Romeo and Juliet, and in the second half Elgar's magnificent Symphony No 1 in A flat major. The 79 year old Sir Colin's Elgar is passionate and red-blooded, in fact close your eyes and you would have thought the conductor was the same age as the players. The intonation and attack of the orchestra belied the large number of players. And the sound, oh the sound ... We are so privileged to have Snape as our 'village hall'; it is brick, the auditorium only holds 700, there are no balconies, and even the seating eschews upholstery to preserve the warmth of the sound. The bottom registers in the packed hall last night were extraordinary, full bodied with real slam, but warm and glowing and never dry.

But above all it was the playing. It would be wrong to say that the quality matched that of the many big-name orchestras I heard at the Proms this year - this student orchestra knocked everyone of them, including the Berlin Philharmonic, into a cocked-hat. It really highlighted the folly of the 'London today, Edinburgh tomorrow' lifestyle of our professional orchestras. In Snape Maltings we heard spontaneity, commitment, enthusiasm and above all risk taking.

Last night rammed home that there is only one form of music, and that is live music. MP3s, CDs, iPods, YouTube and our other technology baubles are just pale shadows of the real thing. And the concert also rammed home that the future of live music making is safe in the hands of the young players of the Guildhall School, Royal Academy and all the other music colleges around the world. As we made our way out of the Maltings car park after the concert the young players passed us laughing, joking and buzzing with adrenalin as they boarded the fleet of buses to take them on the foggy late night 100 mile drive back from Suffolk to London. Elgar denied that there was any programme to his A flat major symphony, but told friends it expressed "a wide experience of human life with great love and massive hope for the future". Amen to that.

* Notable students of the Royal Academy of Music: Sir Harrison Birtwistle, John Dankworth, Lesley Garrett, Evelyn Glennie, Sir Elton John, Dame Felicity Lott, Joanna MacGregor, Michael Nyman and Sir Simon Rattle.

* Notable students of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama - Susan Chilcott, Dido, Sir James Galway, Dave Holland, Paul Lewis, Tasmin Little, Sir George Martin, Anne Sophie von Otter, Jacqueline du Pré, Bryn Terfel and Janice Watson.

* Sir Colin's live (Barbican) recording of Elgar 1 with a professional orchestra on LSO Live is highly recommended, available from Prelude Records and other good record stores.

Now read about the delight of the classical music industry.
Image credit: Lower photo is of Royal Academy players, but Royal Academy Aarhus, Denmark which by sheer coincidence takes us down another Overgrown Path. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Frank Zappa comes to Aldeburgh

I suspect that last night's Snape Prom was the first time that the music of Frank Zappa has been played at Aldeburgh. Earlier in their set Scottish based cross-genre band Mr McFall's Chamber had given the English premiere of a commission from Gavin Bryars, and they finished with a stomping version for string quartet, piano and bass of Zappa's G Spot Tornado (that link is a video performance). Particularly interesting, in view of recent posts, is the connection between Frank Zappa and Pierre Boulez (last link is video).

Listen to an audio sample of Mr McFall's Chamber here. Photo of Boulez and Zapp from ZapInFrance. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Roll over Benjamin Britten

London doesn't have a monopoly on Promenade concerts. My photograph shows the young audience bouncing to Konono No. 1 at last night's Snape Prom on the very floor where Benjamin Britten stood to record Bach's St John Passion. Every year the front rows of seats are taken out of Snape Maltings for Aldeburgh's own Proms season. It runs for the whole of August, and ranges from Paul Lewis playing Beethoven Sonatas to World Music.

Last night it was the vibrant Konono No. 1 from the Congolese capital Kinasha playing Congolese/Angolan trance music which really had the audience dancing - watch them live here on YouTube. The warm-up was the first ever DJ to play Snape Maltings although she clearly didn't know the spirit of the place. Introducing Konono No. 1, she said if so moved we should feel free to get on our feet and start shaking our things. Clearly she was unaware that Ben had already established such behaviour as an Aldeburgh tradition decades ago.

Aldeburgh Music's chief executive Jonathan Reekie has gone on record as saying the pigeon holes of old are dissolving. He is there somewhere to the right of my picture, bouncing in the mosh pit with the youngsters. Which is not something you see BBC Proms supremo Nicholas Kenyon doing in the Albert Hall.

If you can make it to Suffolk the Snape Proms run until August 31. Several of the concerts, including Jacques Loussier, are sold out, check the Aldeburgh Music website for availability. It's just the thing to bring new audiences to Snape, and as Britten said, music doesn't exist in a vacuum. A great time was had by all last night. But please don't give up the day job Aldeburgh.

Photograph On An Overgrown Path. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

An amazing gesture of hope for the future?

"There was a Royal Academy exhibition in 1997 about the architect Denys Lasdun. As I recall, there was a photograph of him in wartime on the beach at Normandy wearing battledress, teaching architecture to the army education corps. I thought that was an amazing gesture of hope for the future. I began to think of buildings as hopes, as frail human endeavours, as children that need to be brought up, invested in and looked after. It's also an idea of the architect as hero, as distinct from architect as villain. Lots of things unravelled from that: where did it all go wrong, where did it all go right...

My endowment from the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA) concerned exploring connections between the historic ambition of opera to combine human expressive arts, and the possibility of contemporary technology. A starting point was to enhance a use of moving image within opera performance. The arrival of digital technology proposes a new box of tools in this area, within the economic reach of arts projects. It's a bit like the early days of film: the grammar of how you use it and what you can do with it hasn't been decided yet.

The question arose as to what kind of musical voice the work could have. The potential to echo the contrasting environment with two compositional styles emerged, and Jonathan Reekie, chief executive of Aldeburgh Music, suggested composers Mira Calix and Tansy Davies. Tansy uses acoustic classical instruments and is inspired by different cultural registers. Mira Calix uses an electronica approach but the source of her sound is often from the natural or found world - rendered into patterns. So both connect to qualities of contrast or duality in the piece within their own work, as well as in contrast to each other."

Tim Hopkins talks about the new Aldeburgh Festival commissioned opera Elephant and Castle which he devised and directs, with music by Mira Calix and Tansy Davies, and text by Blake Morrison. The opera incorporates film, digital sounds, installations and live performance. It is about architecture and aspiration, urban legends and primal myths, past and future, work and play, and children and parents.

The first two performances are today Wednesday (June 20) and Thursday (June 21), and the audience has been told 'dress for the weather' as the performance promenades through the landscape around the Snape Maltings - see picture below. The two images here are computer renderings of scenes from Elephant and Castle. The video artist Tal Rosner is the partner of Festival creative director Thomas Adès. Although Rosner is not connected with the new opera the Festival has a commitment to exploring video and other new media.

In his 1964 Aspen Award acceptance speech Aldeburgh Festival founder Benjamin Britten said "There are many dangers which hedge around the unfortunate composer: pressure groups which demand true proletarian music, snobs who demand the latest avant-garde tricks; critics who are already trying to document today for tomorrow, to be the first to find the correct pigeon-hole definition. These people are dangerous - not because they are necessarily of any importance in themselves, but because they make the composer, above all the young composer, self-conscious, and instead of writing his own music, music which springs naturally from his gifts and personality, he may be frightened into writing pretensious nonsense or deliberate obscurity. He may find himself writing more and more for machines, in conditions dictated by machines, and not for humanity: or of course he may end by creating grandiose clap-trap when his real talent is for dance tunes or children's piano pieces."

Is Elephant and Castle an amazing gesture of hope for the future, and a bridge to new audiences? Or is it just the latest avant-garde tricks? Follow this link for my review and production photos.


Now read about an amazing architectural and musical hope for the future that is not disputed.
Images and Tim Hopkins quote from interview with David Benedict in the excellent 2007 Aldeburgh Festival programme book. Image credits Tim Hopkins and Pippa Nissen. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Music and the spirit of place

Nicholas Kenyon has been Director of the BBC Proms from 1996 to 2007, he takes over as managing director of the Barbican Centre arts complex in October, and today delivers the Hesse Lecture at the 2007 Aldeburgh Festival. His subject is 'changing tastes and changing programmes over 60 Aldeburgh Festivals and 80 years of BBC Proms, the story of the post-war Festival movement, and the unprecedented changes that now challenge all aspects of classical music.'

Although tastes and programmes have changed, Aldeburgh remains a great international music festival. It is still personal, distinctive and inclusive, and those are the very characteristics that defined the seasons of the great Proms directors such as William Glock and John Drummond. Aldeburgh eschews fads and composer anniversaries, and instead challenges with the best new music. Aldeburgh ignores the touring brand-name orchestras with their jet-set maestros and tired war-horse programmes, and instead commissions innovative work such as Yoshi Oida's acclaimed production of Death in Venice, and the multi-media Elephant and Castle. And in Thomas Adès, Aldeburgh has an artistic director who refuses to trade in spin, who is internationally recognised as an artistic visionary, composer and performer, and who is a man of culture.

By contrast, at the BBC Proms Nicholas Kenyon has presided over a festival that has become increasingly anonymous, bland, and exclusive. In a July 2006 Guardian interview Kenyon listed the following among his achievements as Proms director - big screen TVs in Hyde Park, text-message information service, digital television relays, avoiding positive discrimination in favour of women composers (think about it), lots of guest orchestras from Europe and the US, and 'taking people with us'.

In his 1960 essay Landscape and Character Lawrence Durrell wrote 'the determinant of any culture is after all - the spirit of place.' This spirit of place in hugely important in music, and we find it in Bach's Leipzig chorales, Haydn's London Symphonies, the works of the Second Viennese, Manchester and Darmstadt Schools, and elsewhere. Aldeburgh has a very powerful spirit of place, and it has nothing to do with Suffolk fishermen and windswept beaches. It is about passion for new music, passion for inclusiveness, and passion for the visual arts, architecture and new media.

The BBC Proms no longer have a spirit of place. You can experience them at home on the radio, around the world via the internet, or anywhere, anytime - in a park near you. The Proms no longer offer a personal vision, instead they present the 'cookie cutter' programmes of the touring orchestras. The Proms are no longer a music festival, they are a global entertainment brand that stands for audience friendly and risk averse programming.

When you stand in front of Snape Maltings you see the place shown in the photo above. But you also feel the spirit of music from the Renaissance to the contemporary, of the visual arts from Barbara Hepworth to the latest video installations, and of culture from Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears, through Mitslav Rostropovich to Thomas Adès, Mira Calix and Tansy Davies.

I hope Nicholas Kenyon feels that spirit today.

Image credit Arts Council. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

More to summer than the BBC Proms

The BBC’s privileged position as broadcaster, promoter, orchestra manager and new music commissioner guarantees maximum media coverage for their Promenade Concerts. The Proms may be the biggest music festival in the world, but it is not the only show in town. Some of the other festivals can teach the BBC a thing or two about innovative programme planning – here’s a taster of the events I will be attending, and writing about, in the coming month:

Norfolk & Norwich Festival
May 4 ~ Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir conducted by Paul Hillier, Kedrov, Pärt, Kreek and Rachmaninov (All-night Vigil excerpts), at Norwich Cathedral.
May 6 ~ afternoon, Monteverdi: 1610 Vespers, Eastern Early Music Forum conducted by Philip Thorby (not part of the official festival), evening, Bobo Stenson Trio at Norwich Playhouse
May 13 ~ Matthew Halls harpsichord, Bach Goldberg Variations at King of Hearts

Aldeburgh Festival
June 12 ~ morning, Luigi Nono portrait, a performance of Hay que camino’ soñando for two violins, Vive a Venezia - film about Nono, and a talk by the composer’s widow Nuria Schoenberg Nono, at Jubilee Hall and Aldeburgh Cinema.
June 12 ~ evening, Death in Venice, Benjamin Britten. New staged production of the only Britten opera written for Snape, directed by Yoshi Oida, at Snape Maltings.
June 13 ~ afternoon, Jakob Kullberg cello, Per Nørgård, Bach, Bent Sørensen, and Britten at Jubilee Hall.
June 13 ~ evening, Monteverdi Il Sesto Libro de Madrigali, Concerto italiano directed by Rinaldo Alessandrini at Snape Maltings
June 21 ~ morning, Masaaki Suzuki organ, Guilain, Byrd, Purcell, and Bach, at Framlingham Church
June 21 ~ afternoon, film: Gesulado, Death for Five Voices directed by Werner Herzog, Aldeburgh Cinema.
June 21 ~ evening, Elephant and Castle, a new opera using film, digital sounds, installations and live performance. Music from classical composer Tansy Davies and DJ/electronica artist Mira Calix. It’s at Snape Maltings but our tickets say ‘outdoor promenade, come dressed for the weather’.

Artistic Director Thomas Adès has certainly created an innovative programme for the Sixtieth Aldeburgh Festival. But it’s interesting that the first two events to sell out were Masaaki Suzuki’s Bach B minor Mass, and a showing of Visconti’s film Death in Venice. If you can't be there, be here On An Overgrown Path.

Now read how music rose from the wreckage at Snape
Any copyrighted material on these pages is included for "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Music will rise from the wreckage.....

Steel works, Snape Maltings fire: mixed media by Cavendish Morton linked from Island Arts

It was a dark night, but as we came over the brow of the hill the sky was lit up by an orange glow, with a trial of thick smoke. If this was dramatic, seen from close to it was positively theatrical. Above our heads the black shell of the Maltings loomed like the flank of a stricken liner..... In the foreground, silhouetted against the bright lights, members of the English Opera Group chorus were collapsing into each other's arms. It was a devastating event, of course, but one whose aftermath - the triumphant rescue of the Idomeneo premiere at Blythburgh, and the Maltings rebuilding for the very next Festival - swiftly became part of the Aldeburgh legend.

In 1965 the expanding Aldeburgh Festival urgently needed a purpose built concert hall. After much searching Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears found a disused maltings at Snape on the River Alde four miles upstream from Aldeburgh. Architects Arup Associates were commissioned to oversee the conversion of the old agricultural building into a state of the art auditorium. The new hall was opened by Her Majesty The Queen in June 1967 (photo right) to universal acclaim, both for its outstanding acoustics and sympathetic conversion.

The opening concert of the 1969 season was an afternoon performance of Schubert's Trout by Britten and the Amadeus Quartet. During the evening fire broke out beneath the stage and quickly spread to the whole hall, resulting in the conflagration described above by an eyewitness, the pianist and accompanist Roger Vignoles. (The quote is from Autograph Books excellent Time & Concord - Aldeburgh Festival Recollections). The fire completely destroyed the roof, stage, seating, and flooring. All that remained of the main building were the structural walls which were damaged but still standing. (The photo to the right shows Britten and Pears standing in the wreckage). As serious as the structural damage was the artistic loss was even greater. Two of the precious instruments used in the Trout were burnt beyond recognition - Britten's own Steinway concert grand, and cellist Adrian Beer's priceless Grancino double-bass. Adrain Beer heart-wrenchingly describes how all he found were "some ashes and metal parts of that lovely instrument." Also totally lost were the costumes for the new production of Idomeneo that was to be premiered by Britten's English Opera Group in the Maltings three days later.

Through superhuman efforts by Britten, Pears and the Festival committee, Idomeno was transferred to a hastily constructed stage in Blythburgh Church. Costumes were borrowed from the London opera houses, and the premiere went ahead to critical acclaim. Of the other eighteen performances in the 1969 Festival only one was lost, the others all took place in alternative venues.

As if all that work was not enough, on the day following the devastating fire Britten and Pears started planning the rebuilding of the gutted Maltings. Miraculously this herculean task was completed for the first concert of the following season. On 2nd June 1970 the Queen returned to re-open the Maltings (and reportedly said she hoped not to be invited back for a third time). The rebuilt hall that rose phoenix-like from the wreckage proved to have acoustics identical to the original. (In fact some claimed the acoustics of the rebuilt auditorium were superior as Britten had authorised subtle changes).

That three week long 1970 season included three performances in the rebuilt hall of Idomeneo. There were also two performaces of a new production of Britten's opera The Rape of Lucretia, and three of the church parable Curlew River. The rebuilt Maltings was also saw venue for the first performance of Shostakovich's Fourteenth Symphony outside Russia. It was conducted by its dedicatee Britten, and performed with the two soloists for whom it was written, Galina Vishnevskaya and Mark Rezhetin. (Photo above is Britten with Rostropovich, Vishnevskaya and Pears). Other Festival concerts included the world premiere of Hans Werner Henze's vivid theatre piece about a runaway Cuban slave, El Cimarron, conducted by the composer, and Dvorak's Requiem directed by Philip Ledger. Composer and guitarist Leo Brouwer continued the Cuban theme with a concert that gave both an overview of the history of the music of his native Cuba, and a parallel account of political developments there.

The rebuilding of the Snape Maltings concert hall, and the quality of the 1969 and 1970 Aldeburgh Festivals are enduring proof that music will rise from the wreckage. In 1964 Benjamin Britten was awarded the first Robert O. Anderson Aspen Award in the Humanities for 'the individual anywhere in the world judged to have made the greatest contribution to the advancement of the humanities.'

Britten's acceptance speech was subsequently published by Faber as a slim volume (right). It is an important document in which Britten sets out his beliefs and convictions as an artist. The speech has been an inspiration to many others over the years. Not only does it throw light on a great artist and visionary, but it also identifies the crucial issues which are still the concern of all those with an interest in the arts in the 21st Century.

E.M. Forster wrote the following eulogy to the Aspen acceptance speech. It can equally be applied to Britten's miracle of making music rise from the wreckage:

"A confession of faith from a great musician which should awake a response in the hearts of the rest of us, whether we are musicians or not, and whether we are great or small."


I am fortunte to live close to the Maltings, and can savour the legendary sound first hand. For CD listeners the peerless acoustics of the Snape Maltings (photo above) are well served by Britten's legacy of recordings made there for Decca. While I have been typing this article one of my favourites has been playing. Britten is not the immediate conductor that comes to mind for the Dream of Gerontius. But the combination of the date of this post, Elgar's divine music, Britten's inspited conducting, Peter Pear's sublime singing, the radiant Maltings acoustic, and the retelling of the miracle of the Maltings rising from the wreckage has brought tears to my eyes. Alas, like that peerless 1970 Aldeburgh Festival, Britten's recording of Gerontius is a thing of the past - it is deleted.

The definitive life is Benjamin Britten,A Biography by the late lamented Humphrey Carpenter who I paid tribute to in Death of a renaissance man. Thankfully Humphrey Carpenter's sharply observed book cuts through the syncophancy with which Britten surrounded himself in Aldeburgh. Three out-of-print books are well worth seeking out; Benjamin Britten, A Life in Pictures 1913-1976 compiled by Donald Mitchell and John Evans, the previously mentioned Time & Concord - Aldeburgh Festival Recollections from Autograph Books, and On Receiving The First Aspen Award by Britten himself.

All archive photos are linked from the excellent Britten-Pears Foundation web site.

If you enjoyed this post take an overgrown path to Dresden 1945 - London 2005