Orford Castle
Five days in East Anglia with the Aldeburgh Festival and so many other delights is an annual pleasure these days. I had always struggled to get here during my years in Canada and the US but now there is no excuse! So I will make up for lost time. The Festival is in the immensely creative hands of Roger Wright and his exceptional team. And they can do things that only a festival can contemplate.
A perfect example of exactly that was the fascinating recreation of Schubert's legendary program of March 26 1828, the year of his death. With Mark Padmore, Roderick Williams, and a delightful mezzo soprano Fleur Barron, as well as horn player Richard Watkins, the Trio Isimsiz, the Diotima string quartet, and the Chamber Choir of London on hand doing other things in the festival, this delicious program brought a packed house to the Maltings on Monday evening.
View from the Maltings - concert interval Monday 17th June 2019
Mark Padmore is one of the artists in residence during this second week of the festival packing in Masterclasses on Britten song with the young artists as well as curating themed poetry and music events. One of these was Britten's Songs and Proverbs of William Blake sung, with his customary sensibility and insight, by Roderick Williams with pianist Andrew West - again a full house on Tuesday afternoon in the Britten studio.
On Wednesday I took a day off, away from the festival programme, to enjoy some other delights of Orford and its surroundings. The sea is always present and this week it has been in a benign mood, providing perfect relaxation after my last five weeks of over exertion around Europe!
But we were back in action again on Thursday beginning with a delightful breakfast party with dear Humphrey Burton who lives a frenetic social life up here in Aldeburgh, gathering around him so many friends and colleagues from his decades in our world of music. Then to a lunch with an old friend at the Butley Oysterage in Orford before an excellent quartet concert by the Ardeo Quartet in Orford Church. Beginning with a short piece by Toru Takemitsu we were then treated to K 464 - one of Mozart's quartets dedicated to Haydn. Thomas Larcher's mightily impressive and hugely enjoyable IXXU followed. Larcher has been a presence throughout the festival - a considerable composer in residence in the finest traditions of this wonderful festival. His new opera, The Hunting Gun, alas I missed - it was a centre piece of the opening week of the festival. But it was a pleasure to hear this fine quartet delivering such a persuasive performance of IXXU. They ended their recital with Beethoven's last quartet, Op 135. A fine afternoon of music making......
Thursday evening was a huge event - The Rakes Progress conducted by the multi skilled and uniquely gifted Barbara Hannigan. Her Equilibrium Young Artists project provided the core cast for this performance, and the inspiration provided by Barbara Hannigan during the whole process drew some remarkable performances from these young people. Monday evening's mezzo, Fleur Barron was a Baba who could hold the stage at the highest level and Elgan Llŷr Thomas and the extraordinary Aphrodite Patoulidou were fired into wholly convincing performances, and very well sung too. The passion and commitment of Hannigan is an only too rare thing it seems........these lucky young people, and lucky us to have enjoyed the fruits of some extremely hard work.
And last night more Hannigan! She conducted a passionate performance of Verklärte Nacht by the Ludwig Orchestra, then after the interval sang Gérard Grisey's Quatre chants pour franchise le seuil. I am left speechless!! And this amazing evening was bookended by performances of two of JSB's cello suites by Alisa Weilerstein. It really can not get better than this - and only at Aldeburgh.
I am back in London this afternoon, have a trip to see family in Somerset tomorrow and overnight, then back in London until I leave for Cape Town on July 15. Lots of good stuff coming up including performances at Glyndebourne, Garsington and Covent Garden......summers are really busy - no let up!
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