On An Overgrown Path

Put Guardian critic Andrew Clements in a plush upholstered seat in a concert hall to listen to Shostakovich or Mahler's parodies of popular tunes, and chances are he will wax lyrical in his review. Ask him to walk around outside Snape Maltings and experience a multi-media and amplified opera which includes, horror of horrors, a Beatles tribute band, and he will grumpily find it 'in a word, dreadful.' Fortunately I don't earn my living in London churning out reviews of unamplified Mahler and Shostakovich in twentieth-century concert halls, so here are my pictures, and impressions, of Aldeburgh Festival's new commission, Elephant and Castle . Opera is the original multi-media art form, and it all started with Monteverdi's Orfeo in 1607. The proscenium arch single location format using natural acoustics has been the status quo for four-hundred years. Isn't it time to at least challenge that status quo ? Director Tim Hopkins sets out his position clearly: ...

"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...

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 in...

'Music demands more from a listener than simply the possession of a tape-machine or a transistor radio. It demands some prepararion, some effort, a journey to a special place, saving up for a ticket, some homework on the programme perhaps, some clarification of the ears and sharpening of the instincts. It demands as much effort on the listener's part as the other two corners of the triangle, this holy composer, performer and listener' ~ Benjamin Britten . Photos taken at Faster Than Sound , RAF Bentwaters Cold War base, part of the2007 Aldeburgh Festival. For the full story of that special place take this overgrown path. Quote from Britten's On Receiving the First Aspen Award (Faber ISBN 0571100236). All photos copyright On An Overgrown Path , taken on 9th June 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 br...

In 1971 the pacifists Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears purchased the Chapel House in Horham , Suffolk because the noise from US fighters flying from the RAF Bentwaters base near Aldeburgh was disturbing Britten's composing. It was in Horham he wrote his late works, Death in Venice , Phaedra and the Third String Quartet. Britten died in 1976, and RAF Bentwaters closed in 1993 at the end of the Cold War, after 43 years with a US presence on the base. Now, in an inspiring example of 'we have overcome' , Britten's Aldeburgh Festival, under the direction of Thomas Adès , is reclaiming RAF Bentwater, and on Saturday the former Cold War base joins Snape Maltings , the Jubillee Hall , and Orford Church as a festival venue. On June 9th the disused military facility hosts 'Faster Than Sound' , a six hour sound event which joins the dots between music genres and digital art forms. During the evening artists from a wide range of backgrounds are collaborating and expl...

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 c...