A major premiére at the Aldeburgh festival this year was Birtwistle’s Semper Downland: A Theatre of Melancholy and The Corridor (scena for soprano, tenor and 7 instrumentalists). I found the first half of this work (Semper Dowland) to be pretty dull – the repetitive nature of the dour anachronistic music and the rather uninspiring choreography for two dancers combined to form a piece which was devoid of momentum, drama and emotion (ironically). One problem was the lack of contrast in the work, another was the absurd duration of 45 mins. Tenor Mark Padmore did a fine job of making the most of such music though.
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- Hesse Students on Aldeburgh beach
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- Hesse Students at Snape
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- Elliott Carter and George Benjamin
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- Dónal with Pierre-Laurent Aimard
The Corridor on the other hand was far more interesting. This work was all about drama, which musically, Birtwistle managed to generate. A problem existed in the minimal narrative content of the moment of Rückblick the work depicted, but the composer got around this by interspersing the main action with short sections of commentary from soprano Elizabeth Atherton, interacting with the instrumentalists and engaging the audience directly. Both works involved the instrumentalists being seated in the middle of the stage (as opposed to being in a pit) which worked very well – particularly in The Corridor. The members of the London Sinfonietta gave an incredible performance, full of nuance, power and most importantly, evident enthusiasm.
The Britten Song Cycles concert by Mark Padmore was most enjoyable – featuring a beautiful collection of Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo, Op.22. The Exaudi concert of mostly Birtwistle was a little disappointing, the three interludes from The Mask of Orpheus leaving me particularly flummoxed. The singers seemed extremely capable in their performance but the programme on the whole was rather uninspiring musically. I page turned for Pierre Laurent-Aimard at the ‘Carter and Aimard’ morning interview/recital event. This proved to be successful in shedding light on some of the more intricate compositional ideas behind Carter’s piano works, affording the audience a more informed understanding of their composition.
My last night in Aldeburgh involved me page turning for none other than Tom Adès in a concert with Anthony Marwood and Steven Isserlis, which was pretty exciting (to say the least). Adès (on piano) premiered his new Aldeburgh commission Lieux retrouvés with Isserlis (on cello). Having rehearsed the work once in the afternoon and hearing it again in the evening, I thought the piece was excellent. The music definitely oozed a certain French flavour, as the title suggests, and was programmed perfectly with music by Fauré and Ravel. Each movement made an eloquent, powerful statement in Adès expert restriction of musical ideas. This is a piece I look forward to listening to again. The three virtuosos finished with Ravel’s Piano Trio, one of my favourite works of all time, which was fantastic. The consummate enthusiasm the entire concert was executed with was rewarded with thunderous applause and cheers from the audience (even if magnified by my aural position on stage).
