Last English festival standing?
NewsCheltenham has gone. Dartington has been banished.
Aldeburgh tonight announced its most ambitious programme in years.
It includes a rare production of Judith Weir’s opera Blond Eckbert, a new 60th-anniversary staging of Britten’s Curlew River, three major Messiaen song cycles, 23 world premieres and a recreation of the first ever Aldeburgh Festival concert from 5 June 1948, in a performance by Britten Sinfonia (which Arts Council England has tried to kill off).
This will be the last Aldeburgh Festival led by Roger Wright, who is stepping down after ten vigorous years.
Press release below:
Britten Pears Arts presents the 75th Aldeburgh Festival in June 2024
• New production of Judith Weir’s opera Blond Eckbert opens the Aldeburgh Festival
• Featured musicians are composers Judith Weir and Unsuk Chin; violinist Daniel Pioro and cellist
Alban Gerhardt
• New staging of Britten’s Curlew River 60 years after its first performance
• Gweneth Ann Rand performs three major Messiaen song cycles
• Orchestras include the London Philharmonic Orchestra, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, The
Hallé, Britten Sinfonia and the Knussen Chamber Orchestra
• Ensembles include BBC Singers, Ensemble Diderot, The Marian Consort, Nash Ensemble,
Tenebrae and Vox Luminis
• Artists include Christian Blackshaw, Claire Booth, Alice Coote, Julius Drake, Rolf Hind, Braimah,
Isata and Sheku Kanneh-Mason, Matilda Lloyd, Steven Osborne, Andrè Schuen, Kathryn Stott
and Elizabeth Watts
• Continued commitment to new music with 23 world premieres (of which 10 are Britten Pears
Arts commissions) and three UK premieres
• The introduction of ‘Made in Snape’, a strand of new music created on Britten Pears Arts
residencies at Snape Maltings by a wide range of pioneering contemporary artists
• The Red House will be open daily during the festival with talks and exhibitions including ‘The
Composer’s Place: Britten, the Festival and his Suffolk home’
• Visual Art at Snape Maltings includes a new work from conceptual artist Cerith Wyn Evans; a
new series Beryl & Pam featuring Maggi Hambling and Karen Densham; an exhibition exploring
Britten and Pears’ friendship with artist Keith Grant; Conflagration, a painting and sound
installation by Jelly Green and Lily Hunter Green; and a new collection of work from Suffolk
painter Tessa Newcomb
• BBC Radio 3 brings live music to listeners around the world with a series of broadcast Festival concerts
Roger Wright, Chief Executive, Britten Pears Arts commented, ‘The 2024 Aldeburgh Festival is the 75th in the
Festival’s history. The Festival continues to be distinctive and is recognised nationally and internationally, not least
for its unique combination of music and place, with events presented in the wonderful surroundings of Snape,
Aldeburgh and other Suffolk settings. This year, four featured musicians – violinist Daniel Pioro, cellist Alban
Gerhardt and composers Unsuk Chin and Judith Weir – form the backbone of the programming and there is an
exciting mix of opera, orchestras, choirs, singers, dance, chamber music, recitals, films, talks and a thrilling range of
music from the medieval to the brand new, alongside a fascinating visual arts programme. We will also reflect our
rich heritage with a number of events which recreate significant moments in the Festival’s history. We hope you will join us.’
Completely inaccessible to everyone without private transport. I fail to understand why this organisation is not barred on these grounds from receipt of any public funding.
Here’s a handy bus timetable Mr Griffen, assuming you arrive at Saxmundham Station. Worked for me in the past. A taxi is about 20 quid if you would rather travel in more style and have the dosh.
https://bustimes.org/services/64-ipswich-reds-aldeburgh-saxmundham-woodbridge-ip
Thanks for bus timetable, but it seems to exclude Snape.
Defunding Snape because public transport in rural Suffolk is (alongside almost every rural location in the UK) is not great seems a tad radical. In any case, Snape is not inaccessible without a car (but if you do have one, parking is free, and of course car is the simplest way to get there, but that’s the same with almost every rural location in the UK).
For the non-car traveller, there’s an on-demand taxi-bus service, called Katch, which connects Snape Maltings to nearby towns including Framlingham, Parham, Hacheston, Wickham Market, Wickham Market Railway Station at Campsea Ashe, and Tunstall. Their transport is mostly electric powered too, so it’s pretty eco.
If you are a fit person (the area is pretty flat so it’s not a huge effort to cycle) you can take your bike free on the Ipswich to Lowestoft line, though on London–Norwich intercity you have to book a cycle reservation.
If you come by train you go either to Saxmundham (4 miles) on the Ipswich–Lowestoft train line or go to Wickham Market station (6 miles – actually in Campsea Ash, on the same line). Of course you are subject to the vagaries of UK train timetables, but anyone who lives out of London and wants to go to a concert in the capital and get home that evening has a similar problem.
For non-UK based SD readers: the issue of poor public transport in the UK (and where there is, its seeming inability to interconnect services) is rather more widespread than just around Snape…
Thank you for presenting the best case for travel to and from Snape! The on-demand taxi-bus service sounds a possible option but must have a limited capacity so I wouldn’t personally risk relying on it.
I get the point that if you pick any two places in the UK then public transport options will be non-existent at certain times. But my point is that Snape has no public travel options from anywhere at all at most concert times. Surely the obvious location for a concert venue to serve Suffolk would be Ipswich? Not an inaccessible rural marsh?
Not totally sure that Ipswich is quite as satisfying a destination to visit as Snape, but each to their own!
In Ipswich before the concert you could take an inspiring walk through the shopping centre, pause to grab a relaxing bite at Gregg’s and admire the view of the local bus shelter. A week’s residency in Ipswich as a post-grad music student honing your compositional skills would certainly produce some interesting music – on which tack, coincidentally I recently met a relative of a (musical) paramedic whose experiences working in Ipswich on Friday nights and at the weekends are certainly colourful. He’d played at Snape but I didn’t think to ask if he’d recounted similar things happening around the Snape marshes. Who knows?
On more mundane matters, I believe that you are best to pre-book the Katch transport. https://www.katchalift.com/ where Campsea Ash (= Wickham Market station) to Snape looks to be under £4. In rural locations this style of “on demand” public transport is growing as it’s much more flexible than a timetabled service (which often doesn’t run on time anyway), and more efficient, and more eco.
Not quite inaccessible: during the Festival, transport is provided from Saxmundham station and between Aldeburgh and Snape; but, yes, generally private transport is necessary to get to both places. It doesn’t seem to stop people attending, however, and there is accommodation in Snape and Aldeburgh, but of course you have to get there in the first place! A pity: I went to the launch yesterday – a combination of live music and interviews (live and recorded) with performers, including (live) Judith Weir, next year’s composer in residence – a very enjoyable experience. But Aldeburgh is not alone: with the current diminished public transport systems many artistic venues depend on the car for their audiences. The solution is not to close the festivals but to improve transport. Not easily resolved!
Thanks for your reply, but I notice there’s no mention of any Festival transport in the 2024 brochure or on the website.
Try this
https://brittenpearsarts.org/visit-us/snape-maltings/getting-here
For a start it depends on what you mean by “completely inaccessible to everyone without private transport”. The Edinburgh Festival, to take one example, is only accessible to me in Suffolk, in the sense that I can get to Edinburgh by train, stay in a hotel, and then get to the events I wish to attend. There and back in the day by public transport isn’t remotely feasible. And, by the same token, people from Edinburgh can get here by train, stay in a hotel, b&b, self-catering rental or caravan in Aldeburgh and use the Festival bus to get to any of the venues outside of the town itself, including the Snape campus. Many people do precisely that.
But, perhaps, the reason “the organisation”, i.e. Britten Pears Arts, isn’t (and shouldn’t be) barred from public funding is because it provides a year round programme, not only of concert activity but artist development, education and community involvement. All to a very high standard. It also has an impressive record in generating non-public funding, to go alongside it’s public subsidy, not just from private philanthropy but from the revenues of the commercial activities on the Snape site.
Last English Festival standing? We’re still alive and kicking over at Three Choirs, thanks Norman (and actually, so is Cheltenham, albeit in very diminished form).
But the beauty of the British festival scene is the huge variety of scale and focus; the sense of connection and place in all corners of the country that embraces visiting performers and audiences; and a network of people willing to be bold and make music happen despite the funding cuts and the doommongers. There’s plenty of us about… as a starter for 10 you could check out this little map of members of the British Arts Festivals Association: https://www.artsfestivals.co.uk/festivals-directory/
…or EFA’s brilliant Festival Finder tool (though this tends to see most of its listings added as festivals announce their programmes in the Spring): https://www.festivalfinder.eu/festivals/p2?country=United+Kingdom&query?country=United+Kingdom&query=
There’s no denying Aldeburgh’s promising another stunner of a programme, but maybe let’s not talk down our wider festival landscape while celebrating that?
A few weeks ago I was at Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, also still standing as far as I know, and I had an email from Canterbury Festival today. Unless some very particular definition of ‘English’ is in play here, the answer to the question in the headline seems to be ‘No’.