The spirit of 1948 lives on in this brilliant Suffolk festival

After a sad hiatus, the Aldeburgh Festival returns to celebrate the great Benjamin Britten – and challenge him, too

Next Friday will see the opening of the first Aldeburgh Festival for three years. Founded in 1948, Aldeburgh is a reminder of the spirit of post-war Britain when a torrent of talent and creativity broke out after years of sacrifice and preoccupation. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that after its long pandemic-induced absence, this year’s festival on the Suffolk coast represents something similar: the celebration of a defeated, vicious enemy and a reminder that whatever the difficulties of the post-pandemic society, there is much to look forward to.

Spanning three weeks rather than the usual two, this year’s Aldeburgh is embracing greater persity, in the true sense of the word. While it remains faithful to the roots of its founders – Benjamin Britten, his partner, the tenor Peter Pears, and Eric Crozier, one of Britten’s key librettists – it also shows healthy signs of challenging the tastes of the great composer, which, along with the unquestionable genius of his music, have dominated Aldeburgh since it began. Roger Wright, the festival’s chief impresario and a man of refreshingly catholic tastes, has sneaked in a performance of Serenade to Music by Vaughan Williams – a composer of whom Britten (a man not generous to his rivals) certainly did not approve.

However, Violet, an opera by the BBC Philharmonic’s resident composer Tom Coult, which will have its world premiere on Friday, is, one suspects, very much of the avant-garde school of which Britten would have approved. The festival – held mainly at the Snape Maltings arts complex in the village of Snape – gives a showcase to contemporary composers and young musicians, fulfilling its mission to act as a breeding ground for the virtuosi of tomorrow.

Alongside the world-renowned violinist Nicola Benedetti, this year’s featured artists include Mark Simpson, the clarinettist, the cellist Laura van der Heijden and the organist Anna Lapwood, who will play her arrangement of Britten’s Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes. Today’s composers are represented by, among others, Laura Bowler and Gavin Higgins.

The festival is not just about music, nor is it limited to Snape and Aldeburgh. One of the great local architectural treasures, Blythburgh church, will on June 5 host a performance by Laura van der Heijden and the Doric Quartet of Schubert’s String Quintet. On June 11 the festival will mark the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee with choral works from both her reign and that of Elizabeth I in St Edmundsbury cathedral in Bury St Edmunds. Among the great performers giving masterclasses at the Jubilee Hall in Aldeburgh are mezzo-soprano Dame Ann Murray, Nicholas Daniel – probably our finest living oboist – and pianist Julius Drake.

A man not generous to his rivals: Benjamin Britten working on 'Billy Budd' in Aldeburgh, 1949Credit: Getty

The Red House in Aldeburgh – Britten’s and Pears’s strikingly atmospheric home – will host an exhibition about Britten’s friendships with women: a remarkably untrodden path. It looks at female characters in his operas and is supplemented by music written by some of his female friends and contemporaries, such as the composers Imogen Holst, Elisabeth Lutyens, Elizabeth Maconchy, Grace Williams and Doreen Carwithen – the last of whom is bursting out of obscurity after a shameful period of neglect.

The Aldeburgh Festival ensures that what would otherwise be a remote cultural backwater enjoys the highest quality of performance and visual art every summer. But the great enterprise at Snape – which runs concerts, other entertainments and the training of musicians throughout the year – also guarantees that the festival’s message lives on even when its crowds have left.

Many highly talented artists suffered during the pandemic because of their inability to perform in public; and many of us felt deprived of the creative world on which we took it for granted we could eavesdrop and spectate. I suspect that the realisation of how much we have missed will make us pe in to Aldeburgh and the other festivals this summer with even more enthusiasm than ever. As Wright says, Aldeburgh “is a festival that is rooted locally, but whose impact is national and international”. The quality of the musicians and the works they perform puts this serene and unfussy part of the Suffolk coast on the world map.