Britten Owen Wingrave Aldeburgh Music Festival

An ideal choice for this year's Aldeburgh Music Festival, Britten's Owen Wingrave. From a very early age, Britten was incensed by bullying and repression.  Indeed, the protection of innocence and the condemnation of cruelty runs through nearly all Britten's work, powerfully informing his whole creative persona.  Owen Wingrave is critical to any real appreciation of what Britten stood for. The Aldeburgh Music Festival and the Britten-Pears Foundation are wise to stage Owen Wingrave again, in the same place where the composer conducted the first public performance back in 1970. In 1914, men marched to war because they were led to believe that they were fighting "the war to end all wars".  One hundred years later, those who believe in military solutions seem to have learned nothing from a century of almost incessant warfare. More than ever, we need Owen Wingrave and Britten's passionate opposition to mindless conformity.

Owen Wingrave was commissioned for television. Nearly a quarter of a million people watched it when it was first broadcast by the BBC in 1972, reaching audiences far beyond any opera house. That in itself is a statement about its significance. Composers wrote for film almost as soon as technology  added sound to movies. Britten enjoyed going to the cinema, and spent his war years working for the GPO Film Unit. In Owen Wingrave, music and an understanding of film technique go together. The abstraction of music can be expressed through devices like split frames and juxtaposed images. On the physical stage, such things aren't easy to carry off.  At Aldeburgh, director Neil Bartlett has chosen a minimalist set, enhanced by dramatic light effects (Ian Scott). This reflects the austerity in the music, which in turn reflects the stark moral situation Owen is faced with. "Listen to the house!" the female singers repeat, their lines intertwining, as if a knot - or noose - were being drawn tight. For the house does speak - "creaks and rustles, groans and moans" .The oppressiveness is almost palpable.  "The "boom of the cannonade", created by percussion and low brass is so sinister that we could be hearing a thousand years of ghosts marching relentlessly towards death. The spirit of Paramore looms so large in the music that we don't  need to see the house to feel its malign presence. Better the dark shadows and spartan set, so our imaginations can conjure up unseen images of horror.

In the original film, portraits of Wingraves past line the walls, menacingly, and come alive, leaping at Owen, just as the present members of his family scold him, singly and in unison. On film, that's plausible, on stage it would be contrived.  Bartlett, and choreographer and movement director Struan Leslie, use a group of young soldiers as a silent chorus. They operate in tight formation, as befits soldiers, but their movements also reflect figures in the music: a very subtle effect, which  justifies their value in the production. They're also useful for technical reasons - they move such furniture as there is on the bare stage, "building" the haunted room by reversing the panels that serve as walls. Most perceptive of all, the soldiers are young, inspiring more sympathy than if they mere replicas of wizened old Wingraves,  ghosts perhaps of young men sent to early deaths. Victims and perpetrators, harnessed together in perpetuity, like the ghosts in the haunted room, like Owen and Paramore.

The stark staging has a further advantage in that it throws extra focus on the singers and on the Britten-Pears Orchestra, conducted by Mark Wigglesworth, designated Music Director at the ENO when Edward Gardner moves on. Britten, Nagano and Richard Hickox hover over Wigglesworth, but he gives a good account of the music, stressing the clarity of the writing for solo instruments versus larger groups. Excellent experience for the young players in this orchestra, many of whom will go on to play in larger ensembles.

Ross Ramgobin sings Owen. Again, one retains memories of Gerald Finley and above all, Jacques Imbrailo, who created the part ten years ago when he was still a member of the Jette Parker Young Artists programme at the Royal Opera House. Imbrailo is perhaps the ideal Owen, since his voice shimmers with preternatural purity, but Ramgobin does well against such competition, which says a lot in his favour. Ramgobin's voice is agile and light, with a much more convincingly youthful timbre than Benjamin Luxon and Peter Coleman-Wright.

Susan Bullock sings Miss Jane Wingrave. The part contains sharp edges, to emphasize the character's sterile frustration. Bullock creates the effect of strangled tension without tightening throat or chest, but articulates her words with rapier-sharp diction. Catherine Backhouse sings a pert Kate, and Janis Kelly sings her mother Mrs Julian. Isaiah Bell sang Lechmere unusually well, his voice adding colours to the part, which could otherwise be interpreted as bland and callow. A singer to watch. Jonathan Summers sings Spencer Coyle and Samantha Crawford sings his wife, artfully suggesting the dynamic between the couple, where he controls and she is left to flutter prettily, but bleakly along. Richard Berkeley-Steele sang General Sir Philip Wingrave and James Way sang the Ballad singer, again with more personality (a good thing) than the part might otherwise attract.

This review appears in Opera Today. Please see my other posts on Britten, Owen Wingrave and Aldeburgh by using the labels below.

Unorthodox Symphonist Britten 100 Centenary Aldeburgh Knussen

The legacy of Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears lives on in Aldeburgh with the Britten-Pears Foundation. At the Maltings, Snape, in the concert hall Britten and Pears loved so dearly, Oliver Knussen conducted the keynote concert of the Aldeburgh Music weekend marking Britten's 100th birthday. Given the significance of the occasion, some conductors might have opted for safe and solemn, but Knussen's interpretation was innovative, even dangerous, reaching into the maelstrom of Britten's visionary darkness.  Yet it was also exceptionally beautiful, suggesting the majesty of Nature, and the skies and seas around Aldeburgh. Those who deride Britten because he didn't write formal, conventional symphonies need to hear Knussen transform the piece. The Four Sea Interludes and Passacaglia may derive from Peter Grimes but this is no mere suite based on an opera. Knussen shows how it becomes a pure (five movement) symphonic masterpiece on its own terms.

The.opening chords of "Dawn" shine with almost preternatural brightness. It feels cosmic, more than a picture of the sun breaking through clouds. We feel the gravitational pull of currents stronger than the tides of the sea. "Sunday Morning" didn't feel religious (and the pious of the Borough don't practise Christian values). When the lively upwards passages shimmered, I thought of Apollo, and Tadzio dancing on the beach, images much more central to Britten's inspiration than the grizzled Peter Grimes. The viola solo in "Moonlight" was exquisite, its mystery undercut by the tense, brisk brass and scurrying strings. Oddly enough, I thought I heard echoes of the Rite of Spring, which isn't inappropriate, as the sacrifical "Storm" is about to break loose.When the viola returns, it feels achingly poignant. The surging tensions were well judged, so the woodwind figures emerged all the brighter. Knussen is a master of contemporary repertoire: he shaped the jagged edges of the Storm so the music exploded in wild dissonance, surging forward to the shocking, sudden conclusion. There's nothing "picturesque" about Knussen's Sea Interludes. He's no tourist. He inhabits Aldeburgh and Britten's music like a native.

Knussen programmes are always esoteric. It was fascinating to hear the Four Sea Interludes and Passacaglia (op 33a and 3b) together with the Spring Symphony (op 44, 1949). Britten's ideas on symphonic form were heterodox, so highly original that they still confound. Forget the usual old clichés about Mahler, which are red herrings that obscure its true originality.Britten knew Mahler long before Donald Mitchell did. Like so much Britten wrote, it can be approached on different, contradictory levels. its sprawling structure brings together symphony, chorale, western tradition, bird song and show tunes, Latin, English and Middle English. Of course it's a showpiece, the sort of thing Copland or Leonard Bernstein might have liked to have written. The choristers whistle and the soloists twitter.  But it's also satire. Britten is sending up the idea of a symphony "containing the world", whatever that meant in the first place. "Big", he's suggesting, doesn't mean "better".There are also parallels with the Simple Symphony, where Britten alludes to cartoons, and to Paul Bunyan. Perhaps Britten is commenting on American music and the McCarthy era. It's a much more complex piece than meets the casual ear, and filled with cryptic hints.. Listen carefully to Stephen Johnson's analysis HERE ,a superb introduction to Britten's irony. Knussen himself loves whimsy. Who else could have written Higgelty Piggelty Pop! (more here),.He also knows American music. A fabulously fun performance which didn't conceal the bitterness within. "Rejoice" sing the voices, but the brass bleats raspberries.

Britten's  Cantata Academica (op 62, 1959) extended the concept of Britten as unorthodox symphonist. This piece was commissioned by Paul Sacher, so it automatically earns Britten a place among the great and good of modern European composers. It's also by no means a typical "academic overture" weighed down by pomp and solemnity. It's theatrical, for one thing. As the dons of Basel University gather in their finery, the piece entertains them with tableaux of Basel's past. Again, Britten is monkeying about with form, combining mock medieval with modern.

Oliver Knussen was involved with the Aldeburgh Music Festival for longer than most, bar Britten and Pears themselves. Fundamental to the Britten-Pears ethos is the idea that music should not fossilize but grow. Thus, as part of the Britten tribute, Knussen programmed a new commission by Ryan Wigglesworth, Locke's Theatre, receiving its world premiere. Wigglesworth was attracted to Matthew Locke's "idiosyncratic and daringly advanced harmonic and rhythmic language...... (and  the) very rawness and directness of Locke’s theatre music". Wigglesworth's layering of Jacobean non-naturalism with modern clarity is very different from the way Britten adapted Tudor and Stuart music. It's not pastiche,  but firmly constructed. and original.

Britten Beer Blythburgh Bacon

Aldeburgh at the weekend, celebrating Britten. If anything, Aldeburgh is even more atmospheric at this time of the year than in summer. The sea is wilder, and lonelier, and grey mists crowd in. Infinitely closer to the spirit of Peter Grimes than among crowds partying on the beach. The recent storm knocked out power lines and internet for two days, bringing Aldeburgh (almost) to what it once was. The storm was a reminder how fragile "civilization" really is, an observation that's fundamental to understanding Britten and his music.

Aldeburgh is also a foodie paradise. Every visit I stock up at Salter's the Family Butchers. They do mail order, too: I'm ordering my Xmas dinner from then online. Exceptional quality and service, everything free range  Support humane farming and small, local business enterprise. Beautifully hand cut joints, and sausages with proper flavour. And the best back bacon outside Canada. They also stock baked goods, fresh apple juice products and locally produced jams and condiments. This year I had bacon from the farms up near Blythburgh looking out towards the sea.

Suffolk is famous for beer, too. My usual is St Peter's Brewery from Bungay, further north, because it's extremely good, and stocked  by my local Waitrose.  Also available online and at their own pub in Clerkenwell, London.  My friends (and I)  love Adnam's Brewery and have made pilgrimages to Southwold and dined at The Anchor at Walberswick with  a garden that slopes down to the reedbeds. This year Adnams is doing "Native Britten" beers. The bottles come in 3 colours but the beer is the same basic house variety. St Peter's and Adnam's both sell online. Ideal Christmas presents. St Peter's probably has the edge on classy, since they use traditional, small scale brewing practices.

Battle Plan for Britten's Birthday

With Benjamin Britten's 100th birthday coming up on 22nd November, there's so much happening that it's time to prepare a battle plan  to get the best concerts at the best prices (if you haven't done so already).

The South Bank's Britten weekend starts 28/9. Cabaret Songs, Noyes's Fludde, talks and a screening of Wes Andersen's 2012 comedy Moonrise Kingdom, which reflects Britten's genuine interest in community music. The whole weekend will only set you back £25. The price doesn't include  Peter Grimes, which for many will be the highlight. In fact if you go into the website via "Britten celebrations" you'll have a hard time finding the opera, which may or may not reflect the South Bank management's interest in music.

The big draw for this Peter Grimes will be Stuart Skelton. Tradition has it that Peter Grimeses should be stolid and inarticulate, but Skelton's voice is more agile and colourful than many who have done the part, and supports the theory that Grimes could be interpreted in new ways. Grimes is an extremely complex man, a victim of circumstances as much as brute. Perhaps he's a thwarted intellectual. This affects the interpretation of Ellen Orfotrd, too: someone from the educated classes who turns inwards in a hardbitten Borough. I'm really looking forward to hearing Vladimir Jurowski conduct the LPO, because he doesn't do lumpen, and might bring out the Russian soul in Peter Grimes. Jurowski also conducts the War Requiem at the Royal Festival Hall on 12/10 with outstanding soloists: Ian Bostridge, Matthias Goerne and Tatiana Monogarova.

Aldeburgh still isn't - yet - a tourist trap for the "Britten experience" though the Britten Industry will probably put paid to that, though Britten would roll in his grave at the desecration. But anyone seriously into Britten does need to go there at least once to understand the landscape and the sea. Aldeburgh Music is doing Albert Herring from 19/11. There will be numerous Albert Herrings around the country as it's a relatively easy opera to put on, but Aldeburgh is its "home", and where it was conducted by Britten himself inn the dark days of austerity Britain.  Two years ago, they did an "authentic" revival of the original at the cramped Jubilee Hall, complete with home-made cakes and home made filming. This time, we get Snape Maltings. .

Aldeburgh, thankfully, celebrates Britten all year round and in many ways so it doesn't need to overcompensate. A Britten chamber music series is just concluding. On the Birthday itself, Oliver Knussen will conduct the BBCSO and choristers from Norwich in a concert featuring Cantata Academica; Four Sea Interludes & Passacaglia; Spring Symphony and a new work by Ryan Wigglesworth. This is actually much more in the true Britten spirit than the glitz and hype there might be elsewhere. With luck, we'll hear this concert on BBC Radio 3 which is devoting a week to Britten on an unprecedented level.

Death in Venice will be staged at Aldeburgh, part of the Opera North Festival of Britten series, which has started in Leeds with Peter Grimes and ends on 222/11 with A Midsummers Night's Dream. Death in Venice will be the highlight, because it's the superlative Yoshi Oida production, which I saw at its UK premiere at Aldeburgh in 2008 (more here), so I'll be catching it at Aldeburgh on 1st November. This production is exceptional and not at all "comfortable" or commercialized.

Glyndebourne Touring Opera will be doing The Rape of Lucretia from October 22nd. I'll be at Glyndebourne itself for this, because that's where the opera was first performed, in 1946. There's an archive of materials on display somewhere at Glyndebourne. This is a new production, with a very good cast indeed: Allan Clayton, Kate Valentine, David Soar, Duncan Rock and Claudia Huckle. Will we get to see "more" of Duncan, as we did when Maltman did the part at Aldeburgh a dozen years ago?

 The Barbican's Britten celebration starts 8/11 with Ian Bostridge. He's singing Our Hunting Fathers, which he recorded in 1998. Although Britten wrote it, like Les Illuminations, for soprano, it sounds radically different with a man's voice, especially with a voice as unique as Bostridge's.  In the 1930's Britten himself might not have dared dream of such a haunting, dangerous performance.  The softness of a woman's singing would have made the piece less threatening. Bostridge, however, shows how Our Hunting Fathers is a masterpiece way ahead of its time, as violent a work of protest as he ever wrote.

On 14-16/11 Bostridge is also singing the Madwoman in Curlew River, a role Pears felt uncomfortable doing, but which I think Bostridge will do well. It's a production by Netia Jones, so should be suitably austere and intelligent. Good cast, and the Britten Sinfonia plays. Mark Padmore sings the Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings on 24/11 and Steuart Bedford conducts the BBCSO in a concert staging of Albert Herring (no cakes) on 23/11. There'll be a dance presentation of Phaedra in the Barbican Theatre. There is a series of talks, but very expensive for what it is. Much more interesting, however will be the War Requiem, organized by the Barbican but held at the Royal Albert Hall, which should add tremendously to the sense of occasion. On 10/11 it's timed to coincide with Remembrance Day. Semyon Bychkov conducts the BBCSO. On Britten's birthday itself, the Sixteen will sing Britten choral works.

At the Wigmore Hall, the Prince's Consort will be doing the Canticles on 22/11. In Oxford, the Oxford Lieder Festival will be doing an extended Britten weekend. It's unique. Britten revived the countertenor voice for modern repertoire. James Bowman, who worked with Britten himself, will be giving a masterclass and recital/talk. Red Letter Day for every countertenor in the country. Lots of other Britten events in Oxford too.

Fiendish Fun Knussen BCMG Aldeburgh

Serious music doesn't need to be dour. Oliver Knussen connducted the BCMG at Snape, Aldeburgh, in a programme that sparkled with wit and whimsy. Really serious composers have nothing to fear from humour.

Britten's The Sword in the Stone (1939) was written for children's radio, when the media took children seroiously enough to give them real music instead of pap. Bright children could get hooked on real music for life. This is so vivid that any imaginative child can visualize the story. It's very superior music for cartoons, which Britten enjoyed.  Trumpet calls  and mock marches describe the young prince.. Rumbling bassoons suggest old Merlin rumbling along trying to keep his dignity. Who else has drawn a sword from a stone (or rather a World Ash Tree? Britten also parodies Siegfried's journey : the wood dove here sounds like a curlew, suggesting that Britten was hinting at thoughts children as sensitive (and odd) as he would have intuited beneath the surface charm.

Hans Werner Henze was fascinated by Britten and by Aldeburgh, so Knussen returns the compliment with Henze's The Emperor's Nightingale ( L'usignolo dell'imperatore) (1959) . Again, the starting point is fairy tale, and the movements describe the different characters. The Nightingale is defined by flute and the mechanical nightingale by piccolo. Marimba, celeste and bass clarinet suggest exotic, diaphanous mysteries. Like the Emperor, the listener is seduced, Gloriously translucent textures, beautifully realized. 

Pierre-Laurent Aimard joined Knussen and the BCMG for Elliott Carter's Dialogues (2003), with which he has been closely associated. Dialogues evolves from a fairly simple cell of patterns but is the basis for a vibrant exchange between piano and orchestra. Sometimes they are in harmony, sometimes they disagree, but it is an engagement. The soloists have “voices” as if they were highly individual characters having an animated discourse. Rhythms and tempi are also in constant flux. The piano attempts to dominate but is knocked back by the others. The cor anglais is particularly droll and a high woodwind screams in short bursts. The piano growls with menace then launches into a very fast, almost manic run, but is stopped in its tracks by an exclamation from a high-pitched piccolo. I though of a cartoon policeman blowing his whistle! 

Carter's Dialogues II (2010) received its UK premiere. In keeping with Carter's "late, late style" it's pared down to essentials. This time, the piano rumbles, like an angry bull poised to charge. The brass is more assertive. Less whimsical and inventive than Dialogues, Dialogues II feels like a rematch where the combatants are having one last bash for old times's sake. t doesn't feel aggressive though. At the end, there's a wonderful extended chord  where the whole ensemble sings in unison and the piece ends, suddenly, with great emphasis. 

Magnus Lindberg has also long been associated with Aldeburgh, so Red House received its premiere with Knussen, an old friend. The piece is panoramic in concept, a "landscape" piece that evokes the spirit of Aldeburgh. The Red House was Britten's home, secluded in woodland but not far from the sea. Broad, sweeping arcs of sound suggest wide, open horizons. The skies over Aldeburgh, the beach and  the ocean, bracing winds, blowing in from Northern Europe : all symbolic of Britten's music. Lindberg also suggests aspects of Britten;s work, from the diaphanous Sea Interludes to the mock-heroics of the Elizabethan works. The piece is very Lindberg, though. I was reminded of his Seht die Sonne from 2007. 

Witold Lutoslawski's Venetian Games (1961) is a mood piece suggesting Venice, its canals and perhaps its relationship wiuth the seas beyond. Knussen's programming is fiendishly erudite and part of the fun of listening to his choices comes from figuring out his "devious games".  Here he connects Lutoslawski to Henze (where the Emperor's Nightingale premiered) and to Britten, who of course was inspired by Venice. It's an early piece, heavily influenced by John Cage's ideas of chance and adventure. Knussen enters aleatoric mode with playful delight.

Britten Church Parables Aldeburgh The Burning Fiery Furnace

While everyone was at Peter Grimes on the Beach in Aldeburgh, true Britten fans were at the Church Parables at Orford. Curlew River is well established on its own merits but opportunities to hear it together with The Burning Fiery Furnace and The Prodigal Son are rare. The Church Parables will next be heard in Southwark Cathedral in London (tickets from the Barbican) and at the Buxton Festival. But hearing the Parables in Orford is a special experience. They were written to be performed in St Bartholomew's church there. Frederic Wake-Walker's production with Mahogany Opera takes its cue from the design of the building and from the landscape surrounding.

Curlew River (1964) is the most innovative and visionary Parable,  (see my review here) but The Prodigal Son (1968), is much closer to a medieval mystery play. The stylized ritual movements are very much part of this ancient tradition, and relate to the spartan orchestration. The production premiered earlier this month in a chapel in the Hermitage, in front of the very Rembrandt painting Britten and Pears saw when they visited St Petersburg. Hence colours of red, gold and ochre. As Claire Seymour points out in her book, The Operas of Benjamin Britten : Expression and Evasion, The Prodigal Son may have had many extra levels of personal meaning for Britten, so its apparent simplicity is deceptive. Mahogany Opera's production focused more on the church setting.  The father does no violence and understands that the son needs to make mistakes in order to mature.

The Burning Fiery Furnace (1966) stimulated a more inspired response. Frederic Wake-Walker drew on the subtle parallels between this work and Curlew River. The Babylonians are "exotic": gorgeous costumes, elaborate vocal lines, music which mixes pomp with sensuality. The Entertainers are boys dancing in vaguely Balinese costumes, their movements angular and ritualized. .In Indonesia, Britten and Pears watched wayang puppet theatre, where puppets are shown in silhouette. The real "drama" comes from the shadows thrown on the wall behind. It's a brilliant metaphor for Britten's personality.

Britten creates the Fiery Furnace in his music and the players of Mahogany Opera act it out visually. The Babylonians converge over the three exiles, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. The Babylonians wear red caps, and gloves. Their head bob up and down, their hands raised in jerky movements like fluttering flames. Again, intelligent lighting design (Ben Payne), this time creating huge shadows that reached way above the stage. Their music roars. Britten has built the image into his orchestration. James Gilchrist sang Nebuchadnezzar and Lukas Jakobski sang an extremely impressive Astrologer, his voice booming with resonance, reaching the deepest recesses of the Church at Orford. The exiles aren't intimidated. Their God doesn't do graven images. They survive because they have faith in purity.

Claire Seymour will be reviewing this production of the Church Parables for Opera Today.

Britten Church Parables Aldeburgh Curlew River

Peter Grimes on the Beach might have attracted gimmicky interest, but the Church Parables were by far the true artistic highlight of this year's Aldeburgh Festival. The Parables were written specifically for Orford Church. It's important to experience them in this context to really understand their spirit. All around Aldeburgh, ruins remind us of a time when abbeys and churches were outposts of learning. Then came the Reformation, and they were destroyed, burned to the ground in a frenzy of hate .The ruins might look peaceful now but once they witnessed howling mobs hell bent on annihilation. Britten wasn't religious but he despised mob rule and barbarism. The Church Parables aren't really Christian. They are a protest against the destruction of civilized values. The stark white-washed walls at the church in Orford bear witness to violence, but their foundations are strong and have lasted a thousand years. Hearing the Church Parables here adds meaning.

Britten's fascination with non-western music had very deep roots. He worked with Colin McPhee, the pioneer of Indonesian music. Here is a clip from a recording made in 1941, where Britten and McPhee play a transcription of Balinese music for two pianos.  By the time he actually visited Asia he was well aware of the new horizons non-western music could offer. Curlew River springs directly  from the Japanese Noh drama, Sumidagawa River, but it was also a vehicle for Britten's own profound sense of alienation. "I can't write Japanesy", he said. Curlew River isn't pastiche, but reflects ideas long germinating in Britten's psyche.The strange keening lines and swooping cadences can be heard throughout his work, from Our Hunting Fathers to Death in Venice.  Read my piece on The Prince of Pagodas here, and many other pieces on Britten and non-western music. Britten was far more radical than we appreciate.


In Curlew River, Britten connected the formalism of Japanese theatre with the rituals of Catholic liturgical music. Neither form was populist, both the esoteric preserve of an educated minority. Yet Britten, with his passionate belief in communication and in the community, also incorporated elements of medieval mystery plays, where complex ideas were expressed in simplified form. The characters in Curlew River are larger than life, almost symbolist archetypes, and the music they have to sing is extreme. Nowadays. we're so used to naturalism in film and theatre that we forget how recently it took hold.  By eschewing naturalism, Britten connects Curlew River to much more ancient traditions.The stylized ritual also serves as a an emotional mask, distancing the artists from his audiences. This reticence can be off-putting, Britten isn't touchy-feely. But his emotions are so intense that they have to be faced obliquely, as if through a mask.

Curlew River is the best known of the three Church Parables, but at Orford, the connections were enhanced by using the same cast - James Gilchrist, Lukas Jakobski, Rodney Earl Clarke, Samuel Evans, and Mahagony Opera, directed by Frederic Wake-Walker, with designs by Kitty Callister and lighting by Ben Payne. Roger Vignoles was Music Director, conducting the Aurora Orchestra from the chamber organ. The musicians played wearing  monastic costume, and barefoot, like the players on stage. That kept them warm on a cold night, but was also part of the meaning. Like the Pilgrims, like the spartan church, the music is deceptively simple: steady percussion, delicately ethereal figures. Curlew River begins and ends with processions, sung by the monks, framing the strange drama within. At Orford, the singers chant in Latin, followed by the orchestral players, holding their instruments. All are barefoot, their feet in contact with the earth.

James Gilchrist sang the Madwoman. His voice curled around the long, wailing syntax, each tiny nuance dripping with purpose. "I come from the Mo-o-o-o-u un-n tains"  Gilchrist's syllables are razor-sharp. His consonants extend like wailing cries  which could carry over great spaces. Britten's lines imitate the call of wild birds, and curlews in particular,  Orford rises from marshland and reedbeds. Nature is embedded into the opera, reinforcing the non-naturalism of the music.

Gilchrist wears a costume vaguely like the hood a Japanese noblewoman might wear, but it also resembles a shroud. Faint pink tones colour the white gauze of mourning. Do they suggest fallen cherry blossoms or blood? The part is ambiguous, for good reason. This isn't a part for singers who can't take risks. Ian Bostridge is singing the part at St Giles Cripplegate (Barbican) on November 14th-16th, definitely something to look forward to. Bostridge is arguably the best Britten singer of our time, and Gilchrist comes very close. Both are intelligent artists, their skills sadly under-valued by those who prefer safe and bland.

The staging was as compact as the music is spare. The stylized gestures exactly follow the notes in the orchestra,  To create the image of a boat, the pilgrims stood together, moving in unison. Bobbing up and down they suggested the movement of a boat on choppy waters. They stand on a small platform above the Madwomen. Their faces are lit from below, so their features take on a surreal cast . How frightening they must have appeared to the Madwoman, the outsider, desperate for news of her son. The spirit of the Boy appears, as a Redeemer. He suffered, but his death serves as inspiration to those who pass by his grave.  At Orford, the boy is visible, backlit by golden light, and more plausibly some kind of Christian holy figure, keeping faith with the monastic context. The monks of Reformation Suffolk may be gone, but their spirit lives on.

This production by Mahogany Opera has been heard at The Hermitage in St Petersburg and will be travelling to London as part of the City of London Festival, and then to the Buxton Festival.

Also please read :
Pink Triangles and Benjamin Britten
Britten, Paul Bunyan and the Idea of America
Britten Prince of Pagodas

Astonishing Britten Death in Venice - Aldeburgh Festival

Benjamin Britten's Death in Venice at the ENO is revived at the Coliseum. Deborah Warner's production is slick, as glossy as a fashion magazine photoshoot. Aschenbach went to Venice in the first place to escape the comfortable convention he enjoyed with his late wife. Of course Aschenbach in Venice is isolated, an outsider looking in at a strange and alien world. He's a German in Italy, for one thing. Warner's production, however, tips the balance firmly in favour of superficial glamour.. This is the kind of set that gets applause : elaborate costumes to swoon over, vistas that make you gasp at their beauty. But the whole point, to Thomas Mann and to Benjamin Britten, was that surface beauty hides corruption. Venice is lovely but it harbours plague. "All Germans must leave" says the libretto. All non-Germans should be hypnotized by glam, says the staging. Forget the music and meaning.

In 2007, Warner's Death in Venice and Yoshi Oida's Death in Venice premiered within a month of each other. One high budget and glamorous at the ENO and the other at Aldeburgh with a much more humble pedigree. Yet the latter easily eclipsed the former in terms of artistic merit. Oida's staging is powerful, intelligent and absolutely true to the music and spirit of the opera. It's being revived at Aldeburgh this November : the true highlight of the year for those who like their Britten with depth and insight. At the time, I wrote :

"Yoshi Oida knows that the real focus of the plot lies within Aschenbach’s psyche. Nothing here was mere decoration, nothing merely for superficial effect. Everything revolved around the definition of the central character, even the basic imagery of Venice itself. “Ambiguous Venice, where water is married to stone, and passion confuses the senses” sings Aschenbach as he encounters the city built on water where horizons of land, sky and sea blend amorphously. This Venice isn’t about luxury hotels: indeed Aschenbach is repelled by tourist touts and tries to escape. “Ambiguous Venice” is something altogether more sinister. It is a “timeless, legendary world, of dark, lawless errands”, a place of menace and mystery."

"This is an unnatural city, built on water, back into which the city will slowly but inexorably sink. The set designer, Tom Schenk, used the rough-hewn walls behind the stage at the Maltings without adornment, because they resemble the weather-beaten walls of Venice rising straight out of the canals. Only a little clever lighting was needed to convey the impression that we were trapped in an endless Venetian canal, an image that intensifies the claustrophobia that is so much a part of the atmosphere in this opera. Yet, more subtly, the set embeds the opera into the building for which it was conceived, linking this new production to its premiere, when Britten was himself nearing his own demise."

" Even before arriving in Venice, Aschenbach is thinking of death, of “a rectangular hole in the ground”. There’s just such a hole in the middle of the stage, filled with water. It’s a masterstroke. With simple changes of light, it convinces as the sea, or the maze of lagoons and canals through which gondolas ply. Sometimes it evokes the foul-smelling sewers of the city, emptying into canals, spreading disease. Aschenbach’s journeys across water are like journeys across the River Styx, each crossing propelling him towards destiny. Yet water symbolizes life, too. Tadzio and his youthful friends cavort on the beach. They splash carelessly in and out of the water. As Aschenbach tries to draw closer to Tadzio, he, too, tries to approach the water, but can’t bring himself to get wet. Music and staging converge together to amplify Aschenbach’s dilemma. This production has grown from a profound understanding of the score. The music itself portrays character. Tadzio’s music, based on gamelan, is completely alien to Aschenbach’s. It’s bright, percussive sharpness contrasts with the shadows and ambiguity elsewhere in the score. While Aschenbach has lost his faith in life and in his creative powers: Tadzio reminds him of what he was and might have been"

"This production was a wonderful confluence of music, ideas and theatre. Oida says he developed his ideas by asking questions – why does Tadzio unsettle Aschenbach ? Why doesn’t Aschenbach leave when he knows cholera is around ? Is this “passive suicide”, an unconscious death wish ? It is from this curiosity about the human side of the drama that this sensitive interpretation grew. “I am telling the story of the end of a human life”, Oida adds in his programme notes, “All I can do is demonstrate how far the life of every individual is unexpected and mysterious”. 

photo : Amanda Slater from Coventry

Peter Grimes, Aldeburgh Festival

Claire Seymour, author of The Operas of Benjamin Britten,   the essential text on the subject (which you can buy at Snape Maltings), reviews Britten's Peter Grimes at the Aldeburgh Festival in Opera Today.  "....there was nothing ‘conservative’ or ‘run-of-the-mill’ about the performance, led by a dynamic Steuart Bedford, who urged his instrumentalists and singers through an intense, urgent reading of the score; this may have been a concert performance but there was more drama and concentration than is sometimes found on many an opera house stage." 

A CD is in the offing. The Guardian predictably makes more of the novelty of Peter Grimes on the Beach, the open-air performance this weekend, where the singers will be amplified and the orchestra will be a recording. This ought to be fun because you can't get a more "authentic" staging.  Britten drew inspiration from the natural surroundings. We hear the sea in all its moods in this music, so vividly that we can almost feel the rain and salt spray and smell the algae. Britten lived in Crag House, his study window opening straight onto the sea. At Aldeburgh, the fishing boats are launched straight off the beach from ramps. If you walk on the shingle, as Britten did, you are in among the boats and the fishermen. They aren't isolated in quays and harbours. The North Sea howls onto the beach: no barriers, no protection.  For me, this is the essence of Peter Grimes and indeed of Benjamin Britten. Peter Grimes on the Beach may not be best way to hear the music, but it will be a unique experience.

As for me, I'm at Orford for Curlew River and the other Church Parables. These will also be atmospheric as they were conceived for Orford Church, the setting integral to the operas. Britten's Church Parables will also be performed at Southwark Cathedral as part of the City of London Festival (details here).  In September, Stuart Skelton will be singing Peter Grimes at the Royal Festival Hall. Skelton is a consummate Peter Grimes and has done the role many times. This will be a highlight of the year.

I've beenn thinking a lot about the role. There is no reason Grimes "has" to be old and gruff. Troubled souls can be any age. For all we know, Grimes had been abused as an apprentice. Perhaps he's re-enacting the brutality he received as a child. He knows no other way. Given a choice he might not have been a fisherman at all, but comfortably indoors, knitting and embroidering. Which makes one wonder about the dynamic between Grimes and Ellen Orford (note the name). Who would be the man in the house if they marry? Does Ellen really love Grimes or is she projecting her conventions onto him? Grimes is much more isolated and misunderstood than we think. Maybe he realizes that he's better off dead than with her or with society. We're bound by tradition to expect the role to be played in a certain way, but the score itself suggests we should consider more senitive singers  than the usual type. Musically, too, we'd be much better off. 

photo credit Ian Rees

Multiple Britten this week

The Aldeburgh Festival starts this weekend, and of course, is packed with Benjamin Britten . He never intended it to be a festival about himself and certainly not a festival of "British music" but in this his centenary year, we should be pushing out the boat. Or perhaps I should use different terms, in view of Peter Grimes....

See HERE for my summary of this year's Aldeburgh Festival. The highlights are important although this year some of the performances are geared towards the "Britten industry". On the other hand, Britten believed that music should be accessible, so perhaps the "anniversary year" side effects might not be as negative as they too often are.

Peter Grimes opens the Aldeburgh Festival on Friday and Sunday at the Maltings, Snape. Steuart Bedford heads a worthy cast. Claire Seymour, who wrote the standard reference book on Britten's operas will be reviewing for Opera Today. She's very astute. Keep reading! Friday's concert is being broadcast live  on BBC Radio 3 at 7.15.

Much more unusual will be  Peter Grimes on the Beach, a unique realization of the opera enacted outdoors, on the beach at Aldeburgh. This could be very good, as open air performances have been a feature at Aldeburgh for many years, and they know how to do these things well. That's not til 17th June, around when the Church Parables will be heard.

This week's Britten actually started last night at The Guildhall School of Music and Drama with Owen Wingrave. GSMD productions are always lively and Owen Wingrave is the kind of opera students can really get their teeth into,. Should be good. Further performances on 7th, 10th and 12th.

Today, Paul Bunyan on BBC Radio 3, available online for a week. This is conducted by Richard Hickox for the Royal Opera House in 1999, when ROH used Sadler's Wells for medium sized productions. The photo above (by Ellin Beltz) shows Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox in the Bunyan park in Klamath, California. See the man in the corner to get a idea of size ! The park is nestled within a forest of giant Redwoods, so you really feel the grand scale of nature. My son went when he was a toddler, and raved about it for months.

Different Britten - Aldeburgh Music Festival 2013

Aldeburgh is a place of pilgrimage if  you're serious about Benjamin Britten.  Perhaps more than most composers, Britten's music connects to the landscape he knew. Among the reed beds at Snape, and by the ocean (especially in winter), you can intuit more about Britten than rational analysis could reveal. Britten's years in America were a kind of creative impasse. Then he read George Crabbe's The Borough. "I suddenly realized where I belonged and what I lacked". Rushing home, he found his creative destiny. Peter Grimes was the immediate result.

Naturally, Peter Grimes is the centrepiece of this centenary year's Aldeburgh Festival of Music and the Arts. The Festival opens with a concert performance of Peter Grimes on Friday 7th June, repeated on Sunday 9th.  Veteran Britten specialist Steuart Bedford conducts.  Although there will be other Peter Grimes productions this year with starrier orchestras and casts, hearing this production at The Maltings in Snape will have extra, non-musical significance, because the opera was written across the road, literally, when Britten lived at the Old  Mill.

What's more, there'll be Peter Grimes on the Beach, a unique realization of the opera enacted outdoors, on the beach at Aldeburgh. This could be very good, as open air performances have been a feature at Aldeburgh for years, and they know how to do these things well.  Tim Albery directs, with sets, costumes, lighting and sound design by Sounds Intermedia. The singing will be live, though the orchestra will be recorded - instruments and weather don't mix. Since the sounds of the sea and shingle permeate the music, it will be atmospheric to feel the wind, smell the ocean, and feel the wild forces of nature engulf the performance.  As night descends, and darkness envelops the plot, the audience will be drawn into the proceedings, just as the townsfolk in the opera are complicit in what happens. If the weather is mild, it might be an anti-climax, but you are never likely to experience anything quite like this again.

hen Britten lived in Crag House, on Crabbe Street, the window in his study opened straight onto the beach. Crag Path itself is a steep, narrow set of steps which the townsfolk in George Crabbe's time would have used frequently to get from the church to their homes and boats. Crag House is five minutes walk from Jubilee Hall, where the first Aldeburgh Music Festival was held 66 years ago. Concerts are still held there, though it's small and unsophisticated. Renovation would ruin the ambience.

Felix Barrett and Punchdrunk Theatre will be  doing a series of events called The Borough, part way between George Crabbe's original poem (entitled The Borough)  and Britten's opera. Punchdrunk is unique in that they merge performance and audience, performance space and "real" surroundings. Small groups will be able to participate on "individual theatrical journeys" around the places Crabbe and Britten knew, blending modern reality with artistic imagination.

All three of Britten's Church Parables will be performed at Orford, in the church for which they were written. Seating is limited, and parking almost non-existent, but that, I think, is part of what the Parables entail. They aren't "easy", but almost penitential. Theatre in ritualistic form. There are parallels with medieval mystery plays, where spiritual concepts are more important than dramatic narrative. Curlew River is one of the most uncompromising works Britten ever wrote, but also crucial. It's inspired by Noh drama, so it's stylized and orientalist,  but it deals with a theme fundamental to Britten's psyche. The current hysteria about Britten's sex life shows how little his music is understood. Britten's interest in boys wasn't erotic so much as a working out of deep anxieties about identity and loss.  Prurient and small-minded folks should be forced to sit through Curlew River over and over again until they appreciate Britten's passionate protest at the loss of innocence. From this stems his pacifism and his sense of social justice. Miss these thing and you might as well not know Britten at all.

Curlew River is followed by The Burning Fiery Furnace and The Prodigal Son. The church parables are extremely well cast, including James Gilchrist, Lukas Jakobski, Rodney Earl Clarke and Samuel Evans, with Roger Vignoles  as music director. Mahogany Opera (Frederic Wake-Walker) won't be using the oroiginal designs, but those inspired by Mara Amats, an artist based in the region, who had a dramatic life.

Public booking for the Aldeburgh Festival starts 13th February. In the tradition Britten himself established, there will be a lot more than Britten to listen to. Dowland, Bach, Elliott Carter, Henze, Jonathan Harvey and even Stockhausen Kontakte on 15th June. For more, visit the Aldeburgh Festival site HERE.

 photo of Aldeburgh Beach, :Stephen Nunney. Photo of Orford Church : Gary Radford

BCMG - exciting 25th anniversary season

Ambitious season ahead for the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, as it celebrates its 25th anniversary. More than FOUR world premieres! The BCMG was founded by members of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra with a nod from Simon Rattle, so they could focus on playing new music, outside the mainstream repertoire.

It's now recognized as one of the most exciting new music ensembles in the world. British  new music thrives because of the BCMG, so take note!  This year, there'll be world premieres of new works by Alexander Goehr, Richard Baker, Magnus Lindberg, Joanna Lee, David Sawer and Simon Bainbridge. Four of the new works ( Goehr, Baker and two by David Sawer) have been commissioned through BCMG’s remarkable public commissioning scheme, Sound Investment.  

Simon Bainbridge : Garden of Earthly Delights 18th August, BBC Proms Nicholas Collon conducts a 22-player BCMG ensemble, an eight-voice choir (London Sinfonietta Voices), mezzo-soprano Anne-Marie Owens and counter-tenor Andrew Watts. "The work is inspired by Hieronymus Bosch's extraordinary painting of the same name, which presents the viewer with many powerfully evocative and inventive images. Musically, the piece centres on a vocal duo, out of whose sumptuous polyphonic web the character of Hieronymus Bosch is created. Both painter and guide, he leads audiences through a sequence of the most unearthly landscapes ever painted. The music will be in three sections, mirroring the three panels of the painting - Eden, the Garden of Earthly Delights and Hell".

Alexander Goehr : To These Dark Steps. 30th September 2012, CBSO centre, Birmingham "Written for BCMG, the CBSO Youth Chorus and tenor voice (Andrew Staples),To These Dark Steps is based on texts by the poet Gabriel Levin, whose friendship with Goehr grew out of a shared interest in Greek tragedy,cemented later by their involvement in political protest in Israel. The subject of the poems is music itself, and the act of listening to 20th century composers – Webern, Ligeti, Messiaen, – whose compositions frame Goehr’s new work. Oliver Knussen conducts.

Magnus Lindberg : new work,  Aldeburgh Festival June 2013
This is really big as Lindberg is such an important composer and an Aldeburgh regular. "Magnus Lindberg’s new work for BCMG (conducted by Oliver Knussen) has been commissioned by The Royal Philharmonic Society [RPS] and The Britten-Pears Foundation as part of a programme of major co-commissions to mark the RPS’s bicentenary and Britten’s centenary in 2013. The BCMG commission is one of six to leading international composers who will write works for different ensembles - each reflecting the range of Britten’s compositional output".

David Sawer : The Lighthouse Keepers - Cheltenham Music Festival July 2013 "David Sawer’s Rumpelstiltskin, premiered and toured in 2009/10, was one of BCMG’s most successful commissions". (Read about it at the Spitalfields Music Festival here).  "It was always Sawer’s intention that Rumpelstiltskin should become the second half of a double-bill, with another new work, The Lighthouse Keepers, based on a 1905 French play, as a shorter first half. This is a claustrophobic tale of father and son lighthouse-keepers. The son reveals he has been bitten by a dog and is rabid, and begs his father to kill him, just as the light goes out and a ship approaches the rocks…."

This will be a highlight of the Cheltenham Music Festival and the BCMG will go on to tour the double bill in 2014/15. Sawer describes this smaller scale work for two actors and 9 musicians "as having the look of an ‘on-stage radio play’". BCMG, conducted by Martyn Brabbins, premieres this work in Cheltenham alongside Morton Feldman/Samuel Beckett’s radio play Words and Music (which BCMG first toured in 2002)

David Sawer : Rumplestiltskin Suite, April 2013, Wigmore Hall London and CBSO Centre, Birmingham
Sawer has also created an instrumental suite which George Benjamin will conduct alongside his own fairytale-inspired work Into the Little Hill. Benjamin's Into The Little Hill is one of the masterpieces of modern British music, and was a BCMG project. It's so good that, though it's a revival, it's essential for anyone who takes modern music seriously. Read more about it here. I've seen it several times and heartily recommend the CD.

CBSO centre photo: Graham Taylor, Sawer's Rumplestitlskin photo : Keith Pattison