Tag Archives: Aldeburgh Festival

Talking Heads: James Baillieu

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In this second interview centred around this year’s Aldeburgh Festival, James Baillieu talks to Ben Hogwood about the art of picture painting on the piano in music by Schubert and Britten. Though the festival has since passed, Arcana publishes this interview that also focuses on his Live At The Met album with soprano Lise Davidsen, as well as his work with baritone Benjamin Appl.

Picture credit: David Ruano

My first question to pianist James Baillieu is to ask him to recall his first connection with the Aldeburgh Festival. “The first time I went to the festival was when I was a kid. I have a connection through the Young Artist Programme, but my dad’s mother lived there. A couple of times, as kids from South Africa, we spent summers in Aldeburgh. As a grown-up it would have been the second year of my postgrad studies, where I did one of the masterclasses, and I was chosen to do one of the concerts in the Jubilee Hall the following year. The concert was with the soprano Katherine Broderick, and we did some Clara Schumann, Mendelssohn songs and Robert Schumann.”

Has James always gravitated towards playing piano with singers? “I would say the balance is probably 60/40, between vocal and instrumental repertoire. When I trained in South Africa I was doing a lot of solo repertoire, but in Cape Town there is a huge opera school, so I ended up doing a lot of vocal repertoire just for fun. Coming to London was really a focus of training, and I found I loved the fusion of text and music, and had a very instinctive understanding of voices. I found I could play in a way that could highlight that. It was a lucky thing that I ended up specialising in this field, because it suits the way I play and my instincts.”

The spirit of collaboration also appeals. “What I really love about working with people is that that I’m lucky to have a handful of long-term partnerships. We do a lot together, and there is real trust in the relationship. That’s when it can be really exciting because our job is to empower our partners and make them sound the best version of themselves. That often by being very supportive, but also by being difficult, pushing in a different way to create something. When you have these strong partnerships, you can do that and things can be musically alive and interesting. It’s having the trust to change something, but also knowing if it’s a bad day, and people aren’t feeling well, then helping navigate through difficult areas. It’s having the in-depth knowledge of someone’s instrument.”

With Aldeburgh as our subject matter, talk inevitably turns to the music of Benjamin Britten. Baillieu’s first encounter was the folk song arrangements, which left a lasting impact. “I found that very interesting. I think Britten is one of the most musical people. I love the recordings of his song accompaniments. I found the folk song arrangements really fascinating in a clever way, because simple shifts of tonalities and use of gesture highlights the text in a very natural way. That was a window into his music, and then early in my postgraduate studies I worked with Allan Clayton on Canticle I: My beloved is mine and I am his. At first I didn’t quite get it, but then it suddenly clicked. The notes aren’t always the most obvious, but it’s gesture, colour and musicality that comes across. The notes are sometimes quite random!”

Britten’s music, we agree, has a habit of drawing people back. “Canticle I is such a personal tribute to Peter Pears, and you feel such genuine respect in the writing, respect for music and gesture.” James is fully aware of the importance of the piano in Britten’s songwriting. “Allan and I did this at the beginning of our studies, but then a couple of years ago we completed all the Britten cycles at the Wigmore Hall, and it was amazing to see the variety of everything. Just last week I worked with another tenor, David Butt Philip, and we did The Holy Sonnets of John Donne in Tokyo. The Japanese people loved it! They love serious things and those are very serious. It’s a wonderful cycle, really satisfying to play.”

Britten’s music does indeed travel well. “I think also he had a good sense of entrepreneurship, and he knew how to make a show.” The John Donne sonnets were written in response to a visit to the Belsen concentration camp in 1945, where Britten gave a concert with violinist Yehudi Menuhin. Baillieu recreated this concert at Aldeburgh with Maria Wloszczowska. “She’s a wonderful player, and being from Poland brings something very meaningful. Britten’s beliefs are about peace, and with the state of the world right now it felt right to bring something meaningful, to focus on that.”

At the heart of Aldeburgh is the new Festival Academy, of which Baillieu is a director with one of his regular partners, soprano Lise Davidsen, Nicky Spence, Caroline Dowdle and Julia Faulkner. He reflects on the festival’s attendance. “For me the unique thing is that the audience has been very well trained. They trust the festival and challenge themselves. They’re not scared of anything, which is very different to a lot of festivals right now where it’s all about getting the biggest stars to sell the most number of tickets. That doesn’t have a real curiosity. My role is fabulous because the artists really invest in everything the young artists do.”

Baillieu himself is a graduate of the YCAT scheme, one of the most successful and supportive enterprises for young artists. “I feel enormously lucky and grateful that I had all these wonderful opportunities”, he says warmly. “YCAT was pivotal in helping me become the artist that I needed to become. I feel very honoured that the custodianship of this young artist programme that was very pivotal in in in my development has been granted to me. The climate for young artists right now is pretty brutal. Loads of schemes have been shut down and competitions reduced or cut. I wanted to bring the ethos and legacy that Britain and Pears created with this young artist programme, to keep all the cultural enrichment and deep musical training, but to make sure we respond to the musical world as it looks today. If I was graduating tomorrow, things would look very different now, and it’s making sure that as an organisation we’re responding to that.”

James clearly relishes the thought of giving a lot back through teaching and support. “I was so well supported that I really want to do what I can to help, because there’s so much fabulous talent around. The Britten Pears programme works with other organisations to amplify opportunities as much as possible. I keep saying ‘young people’, I still feel like a young artist! Career-wise I couldn’t be happier, but it’s still very fresh in my mind, so I think it’s useful that I know what it feels like to build this pathway.”

With soprano Lise Davidsen, Baillieu gave a full concert of Schubert lieder – a marked contrast to the big stage roles she has also inhabited. “Lisa is one of my close musical partners and also a very close friend. It has been super exciting to be part of her journey, and for the last decade or so we have done various mixed programmes. For the last one we put in a set of Schubert, and it was amazing just how well it fitted. It wasn’t always the most obvious fit to me, but somehow the magnitude of her voice, with something like Strauss songs, you do feel a little bit shortchanged with just a piano version rather than a huge orchestra. But with the simplicity of Schubert, it somehow works better.”

The listeners agreed. “Because the response to that small shipper group was so overwhelmingly and kind of universally positive, we decided to be brave and put together a whole evening of Schubert.” Schubert features as part of the recently released Decca album Live at the Met, where Davidsen and Baillieu added music by Puccini, Richard Strauss, Sibelius and Grieg. The concert took place in September 2023, and the pianist remembers it vividly. “It was an extraordinary experience, and was equally terrifying! The day before I’ll never forget, because in America they have all these unions, and all the stagehands were there even when I needed the piano to be moved 10 centimetres to the right – just two of us in a venue for orchestra, chorus and principles. The music staff were amazingly supportive, and they put an acoustic shell around the piano, which really helped. When we rehearsed the day before I felt immediately calm, because the acoustic is actually fabulous. On the day itself I felt like a rock start. The audience was just so joyous, and there was such a good energy from the hall, that I just loved it.”

The concert (above) included music by Richard Strauss, whose music presents all sorts of challenges for the pianist. “They are very virtuosic and dense”, he agrees. “Most of my training I thought about the famous book by Gerald Moore, Am I Too Loud, but with Lise it’s “Am I too soft?!” If I know that I’m going to do a patch with her I started beefing up myself, whereas with other things it’s about finesse and scaling down. It’s a different challenge.”

Baillieu works with a wide variety of artists, including baritone Benjamin Appl and flautist Adam Walker. Does one complement the other? “I’ve been very lucky that my partnerships have generally been long term and very close, and I have worked with a lot of vocal partners and niche instruments – flute, clarinet, and trombone, working with Peter Moore recently. I actually haven’t done all that much kind of traditional Beethoven sonatas, but I don’t mind. Now I have quite a close partnership with viola player Timothy Ridout and have learned a lot of interesting repertoire.”

Both are YCAT alumni. “Someone like Yuja Wang would not need that, because she had a very clear trajectory and was a big star and won everything. YCAT helped people like me who were perhaps musically interesting but without a completely clear pathway. I guess those like-minded souls stick together, and so a lot of my partners have been from YCAT days. They’re very brave, taking the ‘interesting misfits’ and putting them into the mainstream!”

Returning to Schubert, Baillieu filmed Schubert’s Winterreise with Appl under the direction of John Bridcut. With Appl he also worked on the music of György Kurtág – subject of a previous Arcana interview. “It was an unforgettable, intense and unrelenting few days!” he says with a glint in the eye, “but I was very grateful to have had that experience.” And what was it like filming Winterreise with Appl in the Alps? “It was also challenging. In our partnership, Ben and I have done some very strange things in our lives together! What we hadn’t quite taken on board is how different filming is to recording, and that the focus is completely visual. We had to fight a lot for giving the sound equal importance, but if you had the heating on in the tower it made a noise! We managed to find a happy medium, but the visuals are very striking. Ben then had to go and sing outside with just an earpiece, so I prerecorded some of the songs and he went and did that outside.” The weather also proved unpredictable. “When we arrived, there was absolutely no snow, so we thought the whole project was going to be cancelled, but thankfully the snow came in the evening and there was something to film!”

What would James say are the principal qualities of a good Schubert pianist, when it comes to the songs? “I always feel that what we get from Schubert is someone that understands humanity in sound. I always said I think he would have been a genius psychotherapist, because he manages to get the human condition into sound. In terms of music there are a lot of Classical influences, the elegance and structure of phrases, but I think it’s empathy. If you are empathetic, that’s when Schubert is most successful, because he was obviously very empathetic. He is also unique with the incredible friendships with various poets with whom he had intense connections. He was clearly something of a “connector” – but empathy is the main one I would say.”

His music has proved far reaching. “With Ben we have taken Schubert to Hong Kong, and he’s done projects in India and Australia. It speaks to people, there is a universality about it, and I think it’s because he understands the human spirit. There is also the simplicity. That’s what makes Schubert so hard, because there is a timeless elegance, and a perfect quality that makes it a little bit scary. But there is nothing better than some of those songs!”

You can read more about this year’s Aldeburgh Festival at the Britten Pears Arts website, with full concert information and details. For biographical information on James Baillieu himself, you can visit his artist page

Published post no.2,940 – Tuesday 7 July 2026

Talking Heads: Ryan Wigglesworth

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In the first of two interviews themed around the Aldeburgh Festival, Featured Artist Ryan Wigglesworth talks to Ben Hogwood about the influence of his mentor, Oliver Knussen, and the inspiration he takes from the music of Britten, Debussy and Bruckner.

Picture credits: Benjamin Ealovega (Ryan Wigglesworth, Steven Osborne), Mark Allan (Oliver Knussen), Sussie Ahlberg (Sophie Bevan), Lawrence Power (Giorgia Bertazzi)

Ryan Wigglesworth is a musician of many disciplines – and for half an hour he has joined us to talk about his work as a composer, conductor and pianist, specifically within the rarefied world of the Aldeburgh Festival, where he is a Featured Artist for 2026.

The festival has played a key part in his career, as I ask him to cast his mind back to the first time he visited. “My first contact with Aldeburgh was through the young artists programme, which is where I first met Ollie Knussen – that would have been 2000 or 2001. I had forced my parents, when I was much younger, to take me to Aldeburgh. It must have been the time when the Humphrey Carpenter biography of Britten came out. I read that biography and begged my parents to drive from Sheffield so I could see the place and go on a pilgrimage. It’s been a very special place to me for such a long time, and since the turn of the century, when I met Ollie, that became the most important musical friendship and mentorship of my life. I spent so much time there and was virtually living at his house for a period. It’s a home to me.”

It is striking in conversations with artists that worked with Knussen, the speed with which his name comes up, and the affection it provokes. In this case, Wigglesworth met his mentor through the soprano Claire Booth. “Claire and I were undergraduates together”, he says, “and she was on the course at Snape. I tagged along, because I wasn’t officially there as a student that first year. Claire and I had already learned his Whitman Settings, and we kept asking if we could sing it to him. He was dreading it was going to be awful, but he finally caved in, and we performed it. I think he was very touched, and I think that was the beginning of him thinking, “Maybe they’re not so bad, these two!”

As with fellow-students, Knussen (above) left a lasting musical and personal footprint. “It was my education. I must have sat in hundreds of hours of rehearsals with the London Sinfonietta and the BBC Symphony Orchestra. I could never understand why no-one else was there, and it was the same when I used to go to Boulez’s rehearsals. That was my education, because Ollie’s rehearsals were masterclasses in time management, efficiently sorting our problems, and that pristine conducting technique. I’m so grateful to have had that as my starting point, and with such a dominant creative force in your life, it takes a while to free yourself from their way of doing it, and finding your own way, but it still informs everything I do. When it comes down to it, it’s still about respect for the text, and that the composer is the most important thing – not the performer’s ego!”

He considers further. “You couldn’t not be learning, just spending time with him, sitting at the kitchen table. As everyone knew him understood, he had obsessions at a particular moment in time. He would be gorging on the music of Busoni, or whatever it happened to be that week, so we’d go through tonnes of his music – and that’s an incredible education, going through those scores together – and learning how he marked up scores. It was my starting point, and I’ve developed it in how to learn a score thoroughly, especially when I’ve had to learn something quite quickly, stepping in for a cancellation. I remember having to learn Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius in two days, and it was incredible to fall back on that technique of inhabiting a score.”

The influence of Knussen spreads to the programming for the 2026 Aldeburgh Festival, where his innovations can be felt in Wigglesworth’s repertoire choices – such as the pairing of his own Piano Concerto and that by Ravel, both to be performed with Steven Osborne (above) as soloist. “It’s a bit of a risk, that one!” laughs Ryan, “putting your piece alongside one of the greatest concertos ever written. That was something I began to think about much more deeply spending time with him, the way pieces resonate together. It’s a very subtle and complex business, and of course you get it wrong sometimes, but that’s fine because you don’t know until you do it, very often. It’s one of the great pleasures to have the freedom you have at Aldeburgh where your wings aren’t clipped. It’s worrying that so much of concert life is becoming so narrow, reduced in its scope and imaginative adventure.”

We reflect on his role as Featured Artist at Aldeburgh this year – a chance to spread musical wings? “It’s very special to be able to think about bringing the different aspects of what I do under one roof, because they’re all sides of the same business of making music. Of course they feature in different ways. Playing chamber music is so important because it’s my only direct contact with producing the sound, and I need that. Yet at the same time, if I’m conducting Pelléas et Mélisande, I hope I’m becoming a better composer as a result!”

His reference is to Debussy’s only opera, with which the festival opens on Friday 12 June. “You can’t not learn from every page of a score like that”, he says, “about how to be a better composer and holding the mystery. I don’t think I’ve ever met a composer for whom that’s not the greatest opera ever written, because it’s so difficult to fathom how he did it! It is so elusive, you can’t see how he put it together. The more time you spend in the orbit of masterpieces like that, it’s stimulating for me as a composer, and to spend time with the orchestra. It’s such an organism, this group of individual musicians with a collective personality, sound and ethos – it’s extremely mysterious! That was the great thing about spending all those hours in rehearsal with Ollie”, he reflects, “that’s what you’re soaking up, how these groups function, and how you balance the double basses and harps – what needs to be done on the most basic practical level.”

The orchestra to which he refers in Pelléas is the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, of whom he has been chief conductor since September 2022. “They are uniquely versatile”, he says, “When you think of what they do in the Tectonics festival, with Ilan Volkov, from the most experimental new music – from that to Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony – and they approach it with care and flair. City Halls is so good for classical repertoire, too, and they are incredibly stylish in Mozart, which is such a difficult thing. It’s incredible what they can do, and in such short spaces of time. To be able to flick the switch is amazing, with something like Birtwistle’s Earth Dances, which we performed with Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony at the BBC Proms last year. To achieve that in such little rehearsal time would have been almost unimaginable in the mid-1980s. The speed with which things are inhabited is incredible.”

On a much smaller scale is The Poet’s Echo, a concert where Wigglesworth will take to the piano, joining soprano Sophie Bevan – his wife – in a programme marking the centenary of the birth of Russian powerhouse Galina Vishnevskaya. Along with her own husband, Mstislav Rostropovich, Galina played an important role in the career and life of Benjamin Britten. Britten’s song cycle The Poet’s Echo was completed in 1965 for Vishnevskaya, and will feature alongside Wigglesworth’s own settings of George Herbert, Till Dawning – written for Sophie (above). “The Poet’s Echo is new for both of us”, he says, “and it is wonderful to have a major work of Britten’s to come to fresh and learn together. We’ve done selections of the folksongs for a good few years, now.”

He has great affection for them. “I love them so much – and those accompaniments in the Britten folk song arrangements, each one is a sort of bull’s eye! There are one or two very focused, simple ideas, and it comes back to Britten’s economy.” A quality Britten and Knussen shared? “Exactly – a supremely practical approach. I learned from Ollie, and almost at Britten’s feet. Ollie’s Dad was so involved with Britten as a conductor, taking part in the premiere of works like Curlew River, and Ollie was there as a kid, taking all this up. He always said about Britten that he could have been a grandmaster chess player, or even an army general. The ability to move things in the abstract, in his head, was so strong, and that extends to planning the entire act of an opera in his mind before committing it to paper. He had an extraordinary ability to manipulate things in space and knowing, in the operas, when to introduce a colour, treating the instruments of the orchestra like individual characters, and knowing when to hold one back for dramatic purposes.”

He reflects further. “It’s about finding the off-kilter but logical solution. A great example is the ‘interview chords’ in Billy Budd – they’re every way of harmonising the F major triad. He’s working through a secret, and it’s absolutely right, a key emotional part of the opera.”

Returning to Wigglesworth’s own music, there is a significant premiere with the Knussen Chamber Orchestra on Saturday 27 June, in the form of his Viola Concerto, written for Lawrence Power (above). “It’s quite difficult to talk about, because I’ve not long finished it!” he confesses. “I’m still too close to the process of having written it, but I haven’t heard it yet. Like all of my recent pieces, and I hope my pieces in the future – they’re all my reactions to who is performing, and who I’m writing for. I think I would struggle now if I were commissioned by a musician or orchestra I don’t know, I’d struggle to have ideas. I’m so lucky with Sophie, or Steven Osborne, who’s playing my piano concerto at the beginning of the festival, to have these long term, meaningful relationships. With Laurence, we first worked together years ago. I wrote these Five Little Waltzes for him during lockdown. He’s such a one-off, and his artistic personality is so strong. He has this incredible sound, and variety of colour, and the piece came from my reaction to that.”

He describes the work. “It’s slightly unusual – in three movements, which sounds very standard, but it’s slow-fast-slow. It was a deliberate attempt to try to achieve something a bit more spacious than anything I’ve attempted before. I suppose it allows the viola to occupy a lyrical space. It’s not a battle between soloist and orchestra, more a fluid relationship. It comes back to the music that becomes more meaningful as a performer. Like Bruckner – I love this music so much, and what can I learn from it? Bruckner’s vision is so personal, but there are things to be learned – how to create a long wave, a big paragraph. It’s finding the things that challenge you, because in the past I’ve struggled to create a genuinely long line. You could say Britten concentrated on little cells of ideas, but it’s nice to think about how to achieve something that doesn’t come naturally, that can become more a part of your make-up.”

Debussy comes to mind as a composer capable of uniting the two ways of working, which returns us to the festival’s opening night. “To have created Pelléas as his first dramatic work, and to have got it that right… it was a long gestation process written it a long time before it was premiered, but it’s unlike anything else!” he says, under Debussy’s spell. “As he admitted himself there is a lot of Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov in it, but these scenes tend to be conversations between two characters, with the function of these orchestral interludes, which seem so necessary. To think they were added so late on in the process, just to cover the stage move time, is remarkable – but you need them because of the intensity of each scene. You need the space afterwards to process what you’ve just heard, for the brain to catch up. It’s an incredible living organism, when you’re in it – and it really does grip you! This score is just as much like a drug as Wagner is said to be. The more you spend time with it, the more you need it!”

You can read more about this year’s Aldeburgh Festival at the Britten Pears Arts website, with full concert information and details. For biographical information on Ryan Wigglesworth himself, you can visit his artist page

Published post no.2,915 – Friday 12 June 2026

News – 77th Aldeburgh Festival 2026 – Programme announced

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published by Ben Hogwood from the original press release. Photo above (c) unknown

The programme for the 77th Aldeburgh Festival takes place from Friday 12 to Sunday 28 June. Aldeburgh Festival has always been a place where music is made in full view of its past and its future; where composers, performers and audiences meet in the “holy triangle” Britten believed was essential to artistic life. In 2026, fifty years since Britten’s death, Britten Pears Arts reaffirms that principle as a living manifesto. 1976 marked an ending, but also a beginning: the moment the care, curiosity and exacting standards Britten and Pears brought to nurturing young artists became the enduring thread of the Festival and this organisation’s identity.

The 2026 Festival convenes artists who know one another’s work deeply—musicians who share a language of trust, risk and detail. Featured Artist Ryan Wigglesworth leads a circle of collaborators including Vilde Frang, Sophie Bevan, Steven Osborne, Lawrence Power and Nicolas Altstaedt. They come not simply to perform, but to pass on what they have learned: forming chamber groups, standing side by side with young players, and allowing music to reveal its meaning through shared attention.

In 2026 James Baillieu and Ryan Wigglesworth begin a 3-year tenure as Associate Directors of the Britten Pears Young Artist Programme. The aim is to build academies in which young, aspiring artists can flourish alongside their mentors and be celebrated in Aldeburgh Festival programmes, and to consider how important this venture is at a difficult time for the arts.

At the heart of this commitment is the new Festival Academy, directed by James Baillieu with Lise Davidsen, Caroline Dowdle, Julia Faulkner and Nicky Spence as faculty. Their work, and the Summer Academy that will follow it for instrumentalists and led by Ryan Wigglesworth, continues the legacy Britten and Pears established and marks a new way for the Young Artist Programme to work, enabling young artists to flourish when surrounded by the very best musicians, challenged, nurtured and invited to experience the generosity of audiences at Snape Maltings.

Pelléas et Mélisande, directed by Rory Kinnear with designs by Vicki Mortimer and lighting by Paule Constable, and performed by Sophie Bevan, Sarah Connolly, Jacques Imbrailo, Gordon Bintner, John Tomlinson and alumni of the Britten Pears Young Artist Programme, opens the festival with a work of delicacy and depth. Alongside Britten’s own late works, music by Feldman, Crumb, Kurtág and Henze sits beside 11 new works by Lera Auerbach, Tom Coult, Tansy Davies, Brett Dean, Lisa Illean, Natalie Joachim, Freya Waley-Cohen, Ryan Wigglesworth and others, maintaining Britten Pears Arts’ commitment to the composers of today and the artists who bring their work to life.

Andrew Comben, Chief Executive, Britten Pears Arts commented, ‘Aldeburgh Festival 2026 draws its joy from the energy of the musicians who gather here and the future they help reveal. At the heart of this is Ryan Wigglesworth, who I’m delighted to welcome as this year’s Featured Artist. His long association with the Festival will be reflected in performances as conductor, pianist and composer, joined by many of his closest artistic collaborators. 2026 marks fifty years since the death of our Founder, Benjamin Britten. His and Peter Pears’ commitment to supporting young artists remains central to our purpose, and the Festival and Summer Academies – led by James Baillieu and Ryan Wigglesworth – strengthen that legacy by placing outstanding young performers alongside world-class musicians as a core part of our programming. The Festival opens with a semi-staging of Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande, with an all-star cast and creative team, followed by a wide-ranging programme of opera, orchestras, choirs, chamber music, song, film, talks, walks and a fascinating visual arts programme featuring Ryan Gander, Ffiona Lewis and Kate Giles. Set across Snape Maltings, Aldeburgh and other Suffolk locations it continues to offer a beguiling combination of music, landscape and creative possibility. We really look forward to welcoming everyone in June.’

Ryan Wigglesworth this year’s Featured Artist commented, ‘Making music at Snape Maltings over the past 25 years has been one of the great pleasures of my life. From the start, it felt like home – a place where the most important friendships were forged, a place to grow and develop artistically. So, the invitation to be “Featured Artist” for the 2026 Aldeburgh Festival was a very special and joyous privilege. A strong sense of “family” has always been central to the spirit of the Aldeburgh Festival and accounts for why so many musicians feel drawn to put down artistic roots here. And what bliss it has been programming concerts involving so many of my dearest friends and colleagues:

Nicolas Altstaedt, Sophie Bevan (literally family!), Sarah Connolly, Jacques Imbrailo, Rory Kinnear, Vicki Mortimer, Steven Osborne, Lawrence Power, John Tomlinson, as well as all the members of the two orchestras I’m lucky to be associated with: the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and the Knussen Chamber Orchestra. (the latter itself a legacy of my “thanks-to-Snape” friendship with the late, deeply missed Oliver Knussen). It allows me the rare opportunity to wear all my hats under one roof, as it were: playing chamber music and song, premiering my new piece for Lawrence Power and the KCO, and conducting works that mean a great deal to me personally – none more so than Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande. It really is a great honour.’

James Baillieu, Associate Director, Britten Pears Young Artist Programme commented, ‘I am deeply honoured and delighted to be appointed, alongside Ryan Wigglesworth, as Associate Directors of the Britten Pears Young Artist Programme for 2026–2028. The Britten Pears Programme played a formative role in my own development as a young artist, and it is a profound privilege to return in this new capacity to contribute to its future. This appointment represents a deeply meaningful opportunity to help nurture the next generation of musicians within the creative and inspiring context that Britten and Pears established. I am excited to bring my experience, connections, and ideas to the role, and to be part of an ambitious new chapter in the life of this distinguished programme.’

To read the complete listings, head to the Aldeburgh Festival website

Published post no.2,731 – Thursday 27 November 2025

Talking Heads – Helen Grime

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by Ben Hogwood

Helen Grime

In the classical music calendar, summer effectively begins with the start of the Aldeburgh Festival. This year’s model – the 76th running of the Suffolk festival – comes prefaced by a line from Shelley:

And, hark! Their sweet sad voices! ‘t is despair
Mingled with love and then dissolved in sound.

At the heart of this year’s festival are four featured artists – tenor Allan Clayton, violinist Leila Josefowicz and composers Daniel Kidane and Helen Grime. Scottish composer Grime, currently living in London, joined Arcana for a chat to talk about the range of her compositions in the festival this year, and the close link she enjoys with its audience and organisers.

Her first experiences of the festival date back to 2005, when she was on the Britten Pears Advanced Composition course. “I was studying on that and Colin Matthews was there, and I went back in 2006 to hear the performance of the piece I wrote while I was there. I also played in the chamber orchestra for the War Requiem on a course, and I played in Britten’s Nocturne as well, which was amazing. Those were the first experiences, and I also went to an opera writing course as a composer, which would probably have been 2006. Then in 2009 I wrote a piece called A Cold Spring, for chamber ensemble. It was a joint commission with Aldeburgh Music, the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group and the Sue Knussen Trust. The piece was in the same program as an Elliott Carter premiere (On Conversing With Paradise). He was there, and it was an amazing time.”

Carter is a composer Grime has always admired, and she had met him the previous year. “I was a fellow in the Tanglewood Music Center, and it was his 100th birthday year. They have a festival of contemporary music every year, and that year it was completely devoted to Elliot Carter’s music. As composers we had the opportunity to go to all the rehearsals and concerts, and it was a chance to immerse yourself in a composer’s work – lots of his chamber music but also the orchestral works. This was the time that I really dived into his music and were able to meet him and ask him questions. It was an incredible point in history to think back to really, and he had so many amazing things to say. He was able to go back in time and talk about his time studying in Paris with Nadia Boulanger, and moments in jazz bars, little things that maybe you haven’t read in a book. Hearing that directly from the composer is a fantastic experience!”

Helen lived in Edinburgh initially but moved to London for studying, and has stayed. Her music still carries parallels to her Scottish roots – and these are evident in Folk, premiered by soprano Claire Booth with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra under Ryan Wigglesworth in Glasgow. “Scotland still feels like home”, she says, “and I’m so fond of that orchestra. I’ve worked with them a fair bit over the years, and it was wonderful to be able to work with them on the premier of Folk, with Ryan Wigglesworth, and of course, Claire.”

The piece will receive a second performance at the Aldeburgh Festival, with the Knussen Chamber Orchestra conducted by Wigglesworth. “I’m excited now for Ryan to do it again with a different with a different group. The piece is rooted in lots of folklore traditions. Zoe Gilbert, who wrote the libretto, is particularly influenced by Manx folklore, but the stories are rooted in different storytelling traditions from different places. She based the libretto on the stories in her book, Folk, so when you read them, you feel the resonance with stories we already know and have known since childhood. She’s subverted lots of roles, but there’s definitely that kind of connection with Scotland and folklore, so I wanted to have that connection in the music as well.”

Arcana was fortunate to interview Claire Booth (above) just before the premiere of Folk, and Grime speaks warmly of her dedicatee. “She is a ball of energy! We’re very different in that way, but we get on very well. She is incredibly talented but also interested in many things. She found the book, and we both loved it, and so she approached Zoe. Obviously, I’ve known her work and singing for years. but we haven’t been working together until last year – although this project was brewing before Covid and then took a while to get it together. I don’t think it’s going to be the last time we work together, so I’m really excited about that. She’s an incredible talent but she brings such a personality to the piece, and she can just do anything. It’s very virtuosic, vocally. In Aldeburgh it will be with a small orchestra, so it will be interesting to hear that, in the Snape hall – but also with the surroundings, it’s made for that. When you’re there, and you’re amongst the reeds, it’s a magical place. You can see so far there, and whenever I’m there it always seems to be really clear skies. That time of dusk is particularly amazing.”

As a featured composer, Grime is presenting a varied body of work for the festival. “It is very satisfying. I’ve written a fair bit of music now, and I’m really happy with, for example, my Missa Brevis happening on the first Sunday. I’m really excited to hear that, as couldn’t go to the premiere in Edinburgh. To have these pieces happening in different locations around Aldeburgh is really special, with chamber music as well as bigger pieces. There is also another premiere, a piece I wrote during lockdown called Prayer which I wrote a while ago, which, again, I haven’t seen in a live performance. The Britten Pears Contemporary Ensemble are going to do that, a piece that I wrote during lockdown. It was recorded but not performed live, with the performers doing their bits separately, and Dame Sarah Connolly singing her bit. It’ll be great to be at an actual performance of that as well.”

Both of Grime’s string quartets will be performed in one recital, from the Heath and Fibonacci Quartets. They hold great personal significance for her. “It’s actually quite strange with the string quartets, because I wrote both of them partly while being pregnant. The first one was written in 2013, which was when I had my first son, so it’s weird that I then was writing another string quartet when I was pregnant with my second son! I was writing it at the beginning of lockdown, when we didn’t really know if things were going to be cancelled that summer. I was stressed out because I still had to meet the deadline, which was probably never going to actually happen – and it didn’t in the end, but I still needed to write the piece. For a lot of people that time they had lots of time to compose, but because everything was cancelled and you had a child who was then not at school, you suddenly didn’t have any time to work either, and there was no childcare of course. It was very intense, and I think the music is very intense, apart from the last movement, which is not intense in the same way and is much more of a release.”

Does it bring back vivid memories when she hears it? “Yeah, I can sort of remember how I felt, but it’s really difficult be in that moment. The Heath Quartet, who premiered and recorded that piece, I just love to hear them play, they made a brilliant recording of it and gave the most amazing premiere. So I can’t wait to hear them play it again, and to hear the other quartet with the Fibonacci Quartet, who I haven’t heard play before. It will be really exciting to hear the two pieces together and on the same program. They are sat between Beethoven and Britten, which I’m so happy about – hopefully they’ll somehow hold their own in amongst all of that! That concert is in Orford Church, so again a different venue which is so nice.”

It may seem an obvious question, but does Britten continue to be a constant presence at the festival? “Yes, and I think that’s the way it should be. I was in Aldeburgh last year, and Claire was there too, because she was coaching the young artists course. I paid my respects to Britten and Pears, at their graves. That line of history is so moving for me, and it’s something I hold close. I love Britten’s music, and it’s always going to be important to me, and that kind of continuation and line of British music is a beautiful thing. Having the opportunity to be a featured composer and to be surrounded by that is it’s a huge privilege.”

The featured artists and composers are chosen with typical care, placing Grime alongside violinist Leila Josefowicz (above), soloist in the composer’s Violin Concerto with the BBC Symphony Orchestra. “I’ve waited a long, long time for the UK premiere of concerto”, she says. “I wrote it for Malin Broman, an amazing Swedish violinist who used to be based in London and who premiered it in 2016, and then Leila took the piece on. She was supposed to be doing the UK premiere in 2020, but she’s played it a lot – in Amsterdam and in Finland. This does feel like the perfect moment, though, because Leila has that real connection with with Oliver Knussen. It’s kind of perfect that the premiere is happening in Aldeburgh. She’s an incredible artist, so the fact that we’re both featured artists is brilliant. I’m really, really excited about hearing Allan Clayton singing, and also Daniel Kidane’s pieces. We have quite a few shared concerts.”

Mention of Knussen leads us to talk about another highly influential composer, a clear influence on Grime both personally and professionally. “I have loved his music since the first time I heard it”, she says. “The first piece I heard was Ophelia Dances. My teacher at the time was Julian Anderson, and he introduced me to his music at the Royal College of Music. Every note is the right note, it’s just so beautifully crafted and exciting and powerful and enchanted.”

I was meant to meet him at the Britten Pears composer’s course, but when I was a fellow in Tanglewood he was out conducting, and he gave some masterclasses. He heard my music, and we got on well. Shortly after that, he conducted a short orchestral peace of mine called Virga, which I wrote as part of the London Symphony Orchestra scheme Sound Adventures, which is now known as the Panufnik Legacies. He was a real supporter of my music. I wrote Night Songs, which is also being done at Aldeburgh, for his 60th birthday celebrations in 2012. I really hold that dear, and I still listen to his music most weeks and days. A brilliant musician, composer, and supporter – and I think many musicians and composers feel the same way. My path would not have been the same at all without meeting Ollie.”

Looking ahead a little, Grime has an album of chamber works due for release on the Delphian label in August, a fascinating collection of works performed by The Hebrides Ensemble. “It’s coincidental to Aldeburgh, but great. The Hebrides Ensemble are one of those amazing groups who’ve been so supportive of me over the years, and they’ve given different performances. To have this portrait CD is fantastic, with a string sextet Into the Faded Air from 2007 right through to Braid Hills, a horn duo I wrote for St Mary’s Music School to celebrate their anniversary in 2022. I can’t wait for it to come out.”

Grime also acknowledges the passion and commitment of Delphian to composer albums such as this. “It’s really difficult to get these projects off the ground today, and very expensive, obviously. The commitment to new music in Delphian is absolutely brilliant, there was a wonderful CD the Hebrides Ensemble did a few years ago on Stuart MacRae, and there was a great collection of Judith Weir.”

With these projects coming to fruition, it is great to report Grime’s composition continues apace. “I’m coming to the end of my teaching turn at the moment, which means we get a bit of time for some holidays to compose. I’m writing a horn concerto at the moment, for Alec Frank-Gemmill and the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, so I’m completely immersed in all things horn at the moment! It’s a big piece, a big project, but I like that. I like to get my teeth into something. There are lots of various things on the horizon, too, but that’s the main thing. I’m more of a one piece at a time kind of person. Directly before this, I wrote a song cycle, Bright Travellers, which was premiered at the Leeds Lieder Festival earlier this year by Louise Alder and Joseph Middleton. I’ve been working with a lot of texts, and it’s been great in the last couple of years to work with living writers, that’s quite a new direction for me which is exciting!”

For more information on Helen Grime’s music at the Aldeburgh Festival, head to the Britten Pears Arts website

Talking Heads: Unsuk Chin & Alban Gerhardt

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Composer Unsuk Chin and cellist Alban Gerhardt are featured musicians at the 75th Aldeburgh Festival this year. They have been linked in music since 2009, when Alban was the soloist in the premiere of Unsuk’s Cello Concerto at the BBC Proms in 2009. They talk to Arcana about how the piece has evolved and their hopes for this year’s festival.

by Ben Hogwood

The 75th Aldeburgh Festival of Music and the Arts is upon us – and Arcana is in the very fortunate position of talking simultaneously with two of its Featured Musicians, Korean composer Unsuk Chin and German cellist Alban Gerhardt. Unsuk is checking in from her Berlin residence, where she is deeply ensconced in composition work – of which more later. Gerhardt, as is often the case, is touring – and is about to join us from his hotel lobby in Spain, where he played the Lalo concerto the previous night. 

The two have a strong musical bond, cemented by the Cello Concerto Unsuk composed for Gerhardt, first performed at the Proms in 2009 with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. Gerhardt will bring it to Aldeburgh in 2024 with the same orchestra, under Ryan Wigglesworth, on 20 June.

Firstly, however, we welcome Unsuk to the chat. Her youthful countenance is complemented by an intense focus on her music – which comes to the fore as soon as we begin to discuss Alaraph, a quarter-hour piece for orchestra receiving its first UK performance at Aldeburgh this season. Subtitled Ritus des Herzschlags (Rite of Heartbeat), it is a powerful and dramatic piece, in which Unsuk is drawn to the concept of so called ‘heartbeat stars’, that have a regular pulsation.

“I’m very interested in science”, she says, “and I was very interested in the different types of stars. These heartbeat stars have a certain rhythm of changing the brightness, and immediately I imagined a certain type of rhythm where I could compose a piece with this idea. The second idea in Alaraph came from Korean traditional music. We have very vivid, dynamic folk music, and I was always very impressed by its rhythms and melodies, and I wanted to bring them all into one piece. Lots of percussion instruments will be needed there!”

In spite of the large percussion section, the piece ends quietly, which if anything heightens the drama. “The piece is a kind of ritual,” she explains, “and the six percussionists play a very big role. The sound is moving from left to right and right to left, and at the end of the piece they repeat the cymbal sound. Then they should stand and show the cymbals, as a kind of ritual.”

On a much smaller scale, we will hear a group of Chin’s Piano Etudes, in concerts from Joseph Havlat and Rolf Hind. Talking about the Etudes almost inevitably draws parallels with Unsuk’s teacher György Ligeti, whose own Etudes for piano have proved revelatory in the course of the instrument’s recent development. Were they intimidating when she started to write in the form? “When I studied with Ligeti he had just finished the first cycle of six etudes, and I was at the premiere of those pieces”, she says. “On the other hand, I have played the piano since I was four, so it was for me the main instrument. I certainly got some influence from him in writing piano pieces, but even if he had not written piano etudes, I would have written my etudes for sure!”

At this point Alban joins the call, and Unsuk greets him enthusiastically. “Your hairstyle is new!”, she exclaims, but he shakes his head. “No, just less hair!”, he says, smiling. Gerhardt is being modest, for he too looks bright-eyed and in good spirits. Talk inevitably turns to the Cello Concerto Unsuk wrote for him, and they recall their first meeting. “We met first in 1999 in Helsinki”, she says. “It took a couple of years, but then I had some idea of how it would be very nice to write a cello concerto for him. That was the beginning, but then he had to wait almost seven years while I got the piece ready!”

Gerhardt was not impatient for the piece, however. “I am glad you mentioned that, because it proved to me that you are not slow or lazy, but very respectful for the genre of the cello concerto. I remember at first that you were very hesitant, and that’s a wonderful quality, because these days it’s like everybody should be writing a cello concerto. One of the most difficult tasks nowadays, with a big orchestra, is that you want to use it as a composer. But if you use it, then you lose the cello. You were aware of that huge challenge, and you took your time. It got postponed a few times, and at the Proms too, but I’m so happy – because this piece works! The truth is that it was performed in Berlin by another cellist, Alisa Weilerstein, which is fantastic. Which other modern cello concerto can you say that about, that it was performed in the same city at 10 years difference by a top-class cellist? I’m very happy about that!”

Chin smiles in gratitude. “You are always supporting me!” she laughs. “The first time we met was through Lisa Batiashvili”, recalls Gerhardt, “and she is a close friend but also grew up together with Unsuk’s husband, Maris Gothóni. I knew about Maris first, and then I met Unsuk and was shocked by her charisma and aura, and then when I heard the Violin Concerto I thought, “she needs to write a cello concerto!”

The concerto makes some fearsome technical demands, wasting no time in pitching the soloist right to the core of the action – an aspect that Gerhardt applauds. “Actually, the beginning is among the easiest bits of the whole piece! It’s not easy at all, but compared to what comes later, I’m not afraid of the beginning. I’m happy to start right away because if you sit there forever, you start thinking and getting nervous, which is not a good thing.”

“For me the working process was very interesting”, Chin interjects, “because often the artist and composer will have conversations and contacts, but with us it was not like that. I just wrote the piece to the end, and I delivered, and he delivered his playing. It was extremely professional, and there was not a need to change anything because of his technique. I wrote what I wanted, and he played it at the premiere by memory. I couldn’t believe that a human being could do that!”

At this point, Gerhardt has a confession to make. “This is the biggest shame of my life, because I was big headed, and I got lost three times – I was not happy. The most beautiful and difficult part in the last movement, which is like 80 seconds, is very wittily written and difficult to play. It is probably the 80 seconds I have practised most in my life, and I completely missed them in the world premiere. I’m so grateful that I have had 30, 40 more times now to play it. For me that is the biggest thing. I have not played so many world premieres, but each one is the worst performance – it always gets better. You need to give it a chance to grow – not with the memory slips, but the piece settles. With this piece the more I play it the more beauty and intensity I discover, and the more I understand it. There is so much to understand that you cannot grasp it all at first sight.”

He is relishing bringing the piece to the Aldeburgh Festival. “I am very happy to play it there, after 15 years and having premiered it with the same orchestra. It will be a completely different performance, and I would bet my life it will be a much better one!”

As well as the concerto Alban will be teaming up with regular recital partner, pianist Steven Osborne, in a recreation of a legendary recital given by Mstislav Rostropovich and festival founder Benjamin Britten (both above) in July 1961, where the world premiere of Britten’s Cello Sonata took place. Gerhardt considers the rapport both performers have in that recital. “Britten was a fantastic pianist and a wonderful musician, besides being a great composer. I wouldn’t say Steven and I have the same rapport because none of us is as creative as these two guys. Rostropovich was a composer himself, not a great composer, but he wrote some quite witty pieces, and conducted and played the piano. He was really a complete musician, although I don’t agree with everything he did interpretation-wise – which is perhaps bad taste on my part – but they were two giants of music! I think Steven and I understand each other well because we are closer in age and Western, whereas the Russian and the Brit – that’s quite a mix!”

He considers the concert further. “You have no idea how brave I actually am because two nights before I am playing Dvořák in Chicago, and I arrive in the middle of the night at 1am the day of the recital. I’m already very scared of that day!” We agree that Rostropovich would probably be in favour. “Yes, he would approve of doing something stupid like that!”

Both Unsuk and Alban are intensely honoured by their roles this year. “I heard lots of things about Aldeburgh and Benjamin Britten, who I really admire as a composer”, says Chin, “and it’s a really great honour to be played at the festival”. Sadly she won’t be attending in person, due to the composition of her opera Die dunkle Seite des Mondes (The Dark Side of the Moon) getting to the stage where it can’t be left. “It should be finished by the end of this year!” she confirms. “I’m not coming to Aldeburgh, then!” jokes Alban on hearing the news. “For me it’s an honour, but it is also an honour for the festival to have Unsuk, because she is one of the two or three best living composers. Anybody should be honoured to play her music.”

He recalls his first visit to the Suffolk town. “I think I was first there 20 years ago. A few months ago I went to the Red House for the first time, and saw the manuscript of Britten’s Cello Suite no.1, and it was beautiful to see the handwriting. It had a lot of the fingerings and bowings of Rostropovich on it, and I didn’t like that because I wanted to know what Britten actually said.”

He applies the same argument to the newer commission. “That’s why when we made an edition of Unsuk’s concerto I was very hesitant of putting too much of me in there, because I want the next performer to come up with their own ideas. For example, some of the metronome markings of Unsuk I cannot play, but I like that! The question is – should we change them to what I could do? I said no, because it’s good to know that she had that in mind, and the next player should try to get to it. Metronome markings are not the rule of law, but it gives us an idea of what the composer had at some point in their mind. I would hate if people came and took my interpretation as the one to do. The one to do is in the score, and what was in Unsuk’s head. I don’t think it helps much to ask her how to play it!”

Unsuk nods in agreement. “I think you said once it’s like a child you give birth to”, says Gerhardt, “but then it grows, maybe in a direction you’re not happy with!” The only few things you told me”, he recalls, “were about some slides in the first movement, which happened by accident. The great thing is that we have these scores, which are like a protocol, which give us an idea of what to do and then we do it. Every interpretation should by definition be different, if each one is the same then something went wrong. We become in a way an assistant to the composer ourselves, and if the interpretation is always presented the same then that is a job badly done. We have to be different!”

Playing solo Britten at Aldeburgh, as Gerhardt will do with the Cello Suite no.1, presents a special challenge. “It was scary when I did it the first time”, he admits. “but now the scary part is out I’m just going to enjoy it. András Schiff told me once that the older he gets the more nervous he gets. I find the older I get, the less I care about other people and what they think. I want to transmit what I feel about the music, and the older I get the more I dare to really do what I want, and not follow rules or guidelines. I take Gustav Mahler as an example, and where he reduced the Adagietto of his Fifth Symphony from nine minutes to seven minutes when conducting. Less is more!” As a listener, it is good to hear of artistic development in this way. “As a listener, I don’t want to be bored”, says Gerhardt. I hate it when people celebrate something where there is nothing to celebrate, like a dog stopping at every tree!”

Unsuk, meanwhile, will be totally immersed in competing her new opera. “I am writing the libretto myself as well”, she says, “because I created the story. It is based on the relationship between an Austrian physician Wolfgang Pauli and Karl Gustav Jung. It is a very complex story, and I can’t digest it in pure texts. It is about a man who is a genius but who has a very complicated private life and very interesting, wonderful dream every night. He is suffering, and therefore wants to be helped – so goes to Karl Gustav Jung and they start analysing Pauli’s dream. I took this biography as the base and put some fiction in there to write a story like a new version of Faust. I’m writing the music and the libretto myself, in German.”

The opera is due to be premiered in May 2025, at Hamburg State Opera, conducted by Kent Nagano, and staged by the English / Irish team Dead Centre. In the meantime a much smaller piece, Nulla est finis, will act as a companion to Thomas Tallis’ great 40-part motet Spem in alium, in a festival performance from Tenebrae at Ely Cathedral. “It is very small”, she says modestly. “It is not a piece, more a small prelude to the Tallis piece.” Has she listened to much of his music previously? “Not much, but I knew this piece. The commission came from Sweden, and they wanted a small prelude to Spem in alium, so I thought it would be nice to compose a kind of entrance where the choir are whispering, and slowly the tones come in and it goes to Spem in alium.”

Beyond the festival, Gerhardt has a typically busy year – but first a holiday. “I only think up to June”, he says, “and then I think I have three weeks free!” There are recording plans afoot with Hyperion, which remain under wraps for now. The Dvořák concerto, which he is performing in Chicago, would be a wonderful contender. “My view of it has changed, because I had a look at the facsimile of the piece and a lot of new ideas popped out, so it will be quite different. I think it’s more like what Dvořák had in mind, and I have to tell conductors off sometimes now! I find the same with Brahms symphonies, where people do these same, silly rubatos, and they are lacking in inspiration, because they cannot come up with their own!”

Finally, the question has to be asked – might there be a Cello Concerto no.2 from Unsuk Chin? She laughs, a little nervously! “At the moment there is no plan, but you never say never!” she says. “I would never push for a second one,” says Alban, “because the first one is so great, and I’ve never played it that I’m 100% happy with myself. If any other cellist was to ask for a second one, I would urge them to play the first one five or ten times, and then we can talk! For me that is one of the reasons why there are so few concertos added to the repertoire since Dutilleux. There is so much one can do with this piece, so much fine tuning one can do. We as performers should strive for higher, not for perfection necessarily but for musical expression. I don’t think the world needs number two, we should be very happy and blessed that there is a number one!”

Published post no.2,201 – Thursday 6 June 2024