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Places&Faces® | January/February 2013

The Sound of Suffolk

The world of classical music will have it’s eyes and ears firmly focused on Suffolk this year for the centenary of composer Benjamin Britten. Anne Gould looks at the man, his music,

his love of Suffolk and his enduring legacy

I like making new friends, meeting new audiences, hearing new music. But I

belong at home-there-in Aldeburgh. I have tried to bring music to it in the shape of our local Festival; and all the music I write comes from it. Benjamin Britten, Aspen lecture, 1964

Suffolk People | Benjamin Britten

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f all Suffolk’s wonders perhaps the most extraordinary is that the small seaside town of Aldeburgh with its shelving shingle beach teetering on

the very edge of the east coast is home to one of the most famous music festivals in the world.

Every summer for the last 64 years composers, musicians, critics and legions of music lovers have journeyed from distant corners of the planet to sample The Aldeburgh Festival, an event that’s simply like no other.

According to Shoel Stadlen, Head of Communications at Aldeburgh Music it’s grown from small beginnings in 1948 but more recently they’ve sold 20,000 tickets a year.

“We are hoping that 2013 will set a new record attendance. We know that people all over the world are planning pilgrimages to the home of Britten in 2013.

“In the case of Peter Grimes, which will be staged on Aldeburgh beach in June, alongside concert performances at Snape and a Grimes experience devised by Punchdrunk, we are being inundated with enquiries. We’ve had groups from Australia, Switzerland, the US and several other countries telling us they want to come.”

It’s thanks to Suffolk born Benjamin Britten, one of the leading composers of the 20th century and the first ever to be given a peerage that Aldeburgh has an unparalleled reputation for artistic and musical innovation and creativity.

His legacy though is so much more than a catalogue of sublime music, and an international music festival.

Without Britten and Aldeburgh Music we wouldn’t have a magnificent and acclaimed concert hall overlooking the reed beds and marshes of the River Alde at Snape Maltings.

We wouldn’t benefit from year round performances from composers, performers, dancers, artists and creative innovators and perhaps there wouldn’t be the sense of continuation and education as he’s helped create a platform for young musicians and

writers too.This year, his centenary, promises

celebrations that although focused on Suffolk, will touch communities right across the land.

With a £1million grant from Arts Council England Aldeburgh Music will be leading and co-ordinating a partnership of 100 national and local organisations to produce a programme of events to mark the centenary of Britten’s birth.

For those of us who live in Suffolk it’s going to be one of those years that not just high culture but the whole of our county really will be on show.

Centenary celebrations are expected to bring huge influxes of visitors which in turn should bring boosts to tourism, heritage and art too.

The first big event of 2013 is a weekend of cross arts exploration at the start of February featuring the world première of ‘In Britten’s Footsteps’ by Chris Watson, one of the world’s leading wildlife sound recordists.

Chris, who among many other things recorded Frozen Planet with Sir David Attenborough and brought us the unearthly sound of the groan of an Icelandic glacier, says he’s “honoured” to have been commissioned to do the work.

He said that the experience has been

very special because it has allowed him to rediscover the Suffolk of his childhood.

“My parents used to have a house in Lowestoft so as a child I spent all my holidays here.”

In Britten’s Footsteps he says is a soundscape of the environment reflecting the changes in the seasons.

“Britten used to do daily composing walks from the Red House after lunch. He’d work in the morning and review what he’d written while walking alone in the beautiful marine and wildlife habitats around Aldeburgh.

“When I started the project I did some research and spoke to Britten’s nurse, Rita Thompson, and she told me he was quite an ornithologist and was adept at identifying birdsong.”

So Chris has retraced Britten’s daily composing walks recording in various locations along the old railway path towards Thorpeness, which he says is like a beautiful “natural hide”, on North Warren and at the Red House itself.

Chris believes that this solitude and the natural silence of the environment is an essential part of the creative process and he says Britten was almost certainly aware of this too.

But the thing I am most grateful to your country for is this: it was in California, in the unhappy summer of 1941, that, coming across a copy of

the Poetical Works of George Crabbe in a Los Angeles bookshop, I first read his poem, Peter Grimes; and, at the same time, reading a most perceptive and revealing article about it by E. M. Foster, I suddenly realised where I belonged and what I lacked. I had become without roots, and when I got back to England six months later I was ready to put them down. I have lived since then in the same small corner of East Anglia, near where I was born. Benjamin Britten, Aspen lecture, 1964

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Suffolk People | Benjamin Britten

During his numerous recordings the most amazing moment was in April at Britten’s former home, the Red House.

“It was about 3am with a wonderfully crisp clear starry night and about minus 20C.

“All I heard was the sound of a fox barking and then at 3.20am there was the solo song of the nightingale – Britten’s favourite bird. It was an incredible moment.”

He said, “Now listening to some of his cello suites to my ears I can hear the phrasing of that nightingale.”

Chris says his recordings have been edited into about 40 minutes and will be played back on an ambisonic sound system and combined with some of Britten’s cello music performed live by Oliver Coates.

As part of In Britten’s Footsteps weekend the public have also been invited to join Chris, along with RSPB volunteers to experience the sights and sounds themselves by walking some of the routes that Britten took.

“It’s been a great privilege to do this. When you record for TV the sound is sometimes lost because of interfering music. Here there’s the opportunity for the sounds to be used without being adulterated - and people will get it.”

The weekend will also see Paul Kildea launching his new biography of Britten in a day long discussion by authors, novelists and editors into the meanings of home in all its aspects.

There will also be a screening of Ben Rivers’ film, Two Years at Sea, with a new score performed live by Mercury Prize-winning composer and tabla player Talvin Singh.

The investigations continue on Sunday with talks by architectural historian, Ken Worpole who delves into the utopian promise of social housing with colleagues from the Estate Film Project.

Later in the year, the Aldeburgh Festival in June features premières from six leading international composers co-commissioned by the Britten-Pears Foundation and the Royal

Philharmonic Society: Harrison Birtwistle, Magnus Lindberg, Wolfgang Rihm, Richard Rodney-Bennett, Poul Ruders and Judith Weir.

Aldeburgh Music has also commissioned works from artists in different disciplines to provide responses to Britten.

Playwright Mark Ravenhill and music theatre composer Conor Mitchell add eight new songs to Britten’s Cabaret Songs - four original settings of Auden texts that Britten discarded and four new ones; jazz trumpeter and composer Guy Barker takes his inspiration from the characters in Britten’s operas for a new jazz suite.

Kim Brandstrup, Cameron McMillan and Ashley Page have choreographed music written by and inspired by Britten; and SNAP, Aldeburgh Festival’s visual arts show, features new works inspired by Britten by artists including Abigail Lane, Sarah Lucas, Maggi Hambling and many others.

Two major operatic projects during the Festival recognise the huge influence that location had on Britten’s work. Britten’s most famous opera, Peter Grimes, comes home to the place that inspired it, with concert performances at Snape, a unique staging on Aldeburgh beach.

Meanwhile the three Church Parables will receive a rare staging at Orford Church, the location for which they were composed.

Outside the Festival, theatre director Neil Bartlett and lighting designer Paule Constable collaborate with Ian Bostridge and other artists to re-interpret The Canticles.

Additionally, Britten’s passionate belief in the composer’s active role in the community is recognised by a series of projects masterminded by Aldeburgh Music which include a nationwide singing project Friday Afternoons based on Britten’s songs for children’s choir; a series of summer feasts inspired by Albert Herring; and a production of Noye’s Fludde performed by local town people in Lowestoft, Britten’s birthplace.

BriTTen CenTenary evenTS ThiS monTh

feBruary 1 Britten Studio, Snape, 8pm

Christ Watson In Britten’s Footsteps Oliver Coates, cello

Tickets: £10

feBruary 2Britten Studio, Snape,11am

A day-long enquiry into the meanings of home in all its aspects, whether

physical or psychological, cultural or political, alongside the journeys we make towards and away from it, in

longing and loss. Ronald Blythe, Geoff Dyer, Paul Kildea, Ali Smith, Marina

Warner and Full Circle Editions.Tickets: £25, Under 27s half price

Britten Studio, Snape, 8pm Home -Made: Two Years At Sea

In a unique encounter of acclaimed talents, Mercury Prize-winning

composer, producer and tabla player Talvin Singh will perform live his new

score for the remarkable feature by multi-award winning artist film maker

Ben Rivers. Tickets: £15, Under 27s half price

feBruary 3Britten Studio, Snape, 10.30am

Residence On EarthSnape Investigations continue with explorations of the utopian promise

of social housing, migration, and exile localism. Blake Morrison, Ruth Padel, Ken Worpole, Patrick Wright, Andrea

Luka Zimmerman and others.Tickets: £15, Under 27s half price

Aldeburgh, 2.30pm In Britten’s Footsteps – A Walk

The chance to retrace Britten’s walks, guided by Chris Watson and RSPB volunteers. Tickets: £10, Weekend

ticket holders £7

For more information on exhibitions and films throughout the weekend please visit

www.aldeburgh.co.uk/britten Box Office: 01728 687110