Britten Sinfonia tour two powerful responses to Classical myth in October 2026, presenting Benjamin Britten’s Phaedra with Helen Charlston and John Woolrich’s Monteverdi-inspired Ulysses Awakes for viola and strings in Norwich, Cambridge, and at the Barbican. The pieces appear as part of a programme marking 50 years since Britten’s death, and reprises works from the ensemble’s appearance at the Aldeburgh Festival in June; the concert will be narrated by classicist Natalie Haynes.
An austere 15-minute cantata for voice, strings, harpsichord, and percussion, with a text by Robert Lowell, Phaedra has the tough and uncompromising edges of Britten’s late style, characteristic of works like Children’s Crusade and the Third Suite for Cello.
It has made several outings in this anniversary year for the composer, including at the Lammermuir Festival with the Orchestra of Scottish Opera and Charlotte Clapperton – with the mezzo soprano Dame Janet Baker, for whom the work was created, in attendance. It will also appear in December this year at Wigmore Hall’s weekend-long Britten celebration with Ema Nikolovska and O/Modernt, conducted by Hugo Ticciati.
It is complemented by Ulysses Awakes, John Woolrich’s 8-minute evocation of myth that reimagines an aria from Monteverdi’s Il ritorno d’Ulisse in Patria, in which the titular hero finds himself washed up on the shore. In Woolrich’s evocative, searching retelling of this scene, the viola part ‘sings’ Ulysses.
To date Ulysses Awakes has received over 300 performances worldwide since its premiere in 1989 from Clare Finnimore and the Guildhall String Ensemble at Dartington International Summer School; it has been recorded by the Orchestra of St. John’s Smith Square with Jane Atkins and John Lubbock, and more recently, in 2018 by 12 Ensemble. It will tour with Scottish Ensemble in December 2026 and appear with Maxim Rysanov and Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana in Lugano in January 2027.