Aldeburgh Festival - The Festival Today

The Festival Today

The organisation responsible for running the Aldeburgh Festival changed its name to Aldeburgh Music in 2006.

Thomas Adès was succeeded as Artistic Director of the Festival by Pierre-Laurent Aimard in 2009. In 2009, a suite of new spaces at Snape Maltings, including the Hoffmann Building’s Britten Studio and the Jerwood Kiln Studio, was opened with the premiere performance of Harrison Birtwistle’s The Corridor.

The 2012 Festival, had Oliver Knussen as Artist in Residence, and the typically eclectic progamme included new productions by Netia Jones of Knussen’s Where the Wild Things Are and Higglety Pigglety Pop!, a concert series exploring the work of Helmut Lachenmann, recitals by Menahem Pressler, Ian Bostridge, Peter Serkin, Miklós Perényi, Dezsö Ránki and the Arditti and Keller Quartets, the CBSO with the UK premiere of a work by Elliott Carter, as well as dramatised performances with film at the Leiston Long Shop Museum, the complete screening with live accompaniment of Britten’s 1930s film scores, a promenade performance of John Cage’s Song Books in the Hoffmann Building under the banner of #Faster than Sound, and open-air community events on Aldeburgh Beach.

The centenary of Britten’s birth will be held between November 2012 and November 2013, and the 2013 Festival, the 66th, will feature a new production by Tim Albery of Britten’s opera, Peter Grimes, the complete Church Parables in Orford Church and new works by Harrison Birtwistle, Wolfgang Rihm, Judith Weir, Magnus Lindberg and Richard Rodney Bennett.

In addition to the annual Festival, Aldeburgh Music also runs the Britten-Pears Young Artist Programme (formerly the Britten-Pears School for Advanced Musical Studies), Aldeburgh Residencies - a programme offering bespoke training and development opportunities to UK and international artists – Aldeburgh Young Musicians for exceptionally talented young people between the ages of 8 and 18, The Jerwood Opera Writing Programme, for the development of new opera, as well as an extensive education programme. Aldeburgh's artist development programmes feed heavily into the June festival and other events throughout the year.

The Aldeburgh Festival retains a unique character, largely due to its location in rural Suffolk. It also continues to emphasise the presentation of new music, new interpretations and the rediscovery of forgotten music. It has seen the premières of several works by Britten (A Midsummer Night's Dream in 1960; Death in Venice in 1973) and also Harrison Birtwistle's Punch and Judy in 1968, The Io Passion in 2004 and The Corridor in 2009.

The Aldeburgh Festival has always included the visual arts as well as music, and a number of exhibitions are curated each year to accompany the music programme. From 2011, the main exhibition of contemporary art has been promoted under the title SNAP, at various locations around the Snape Maltings site, organized by Abigail Lane. In 2012, featured artists included Glenn Brown, May Cornet, Brian Eno, Ryan Gander, Maggi Hambling, Mark Limbrick, Emily Richardson and Gavin Turk.