The 76th Aldeburgh Festival shines a spotlight on the music of Colin Matthews in June 2025. The focus, entailing several world premiere, celebrates a composer who has had a longstanding association with the Festival since his early work with both Benjamin Britten and Imogen Holst, and played a pivotal role in establishing the Composition Course in 1992 with Oliver Knussen.
The Festival opens on 13 June with the world premiere of Matthews’ debut opera A Visit to Friends, with a libretto by William Boyd, directed by Rachael Hewer. Cast in ten scenes after a story by Anton Chekhov, the 90-minute work sees a group of singers come together to rehearse an opera, bringing to light their desires and frustrations as it runs its course. Matthews’ music for the opera-within-an-opera draws inspiration from Scriabin. The cast includes Marcus Farnsworth, Lotte Betts-Dean, Susanna Hurrell, Edward Hawkins, and Gary Matthewman in a non-singing role as the production’s repetiteur; Jessica Cottis conducts Aurora Orchestra. A Visit to Friends is kindly supported by the Basil Coleman Memorial Fund.
The Festival also showcases two new chamber works: Leila Josefowicz, who premiered Matthews’ 2009 Violin Concerto, is joined by Huw Watkins to debut Matthews’ Paraphrases on 25 June, an 8-minute work for violin and piano; on the morning of 14 June the Gildas Quartet premiere Matthews’ 17-minute String Quartet No.6.
A world premiere that showcases Matthews’ gifts as an orchestrator concludes the Festival on 29 June: Book 2 of Debussy’s Images from the London Symphony Orchestra and Antonio Pappano. The 14-minute selection complements his earlier orchestrations of Book I of Images and the Préludes. The premiere continues Matthews’ longstanding relationship with the LSO, where he was Associate Composer from 1992-1999; in May 2023 they premiered Mosaics with François-Xavier Roth.
Tom Coult returns to Aldeburgh for the world premiere of a Black Shuck Lament for tenor Allan Clayton and Dunedin Consort at Blythburgh Church (21 June). The 8-minute piece is inspired by the Lamentations of Jeremiah. This latest commission from Britten-Pears Arts follows Coult’s 2024 reworkings of music by Hildegard von Bingen for Daniel Pioro and Marian Consort O Ecclesia, O Euchari, and debut chamber opera Violet in 2022.
Newly-formed ensemble Les Marteaux, assembled by Sean Shibe, present Cassandra Miller’s tribute to Maria Callas Bel Canto alongside Boulez’s seminal song cycle on 23 June. The 16-minute work for mezzo-soprano and ensemble will be performed by Ema Nikolovska Adam Walker, Colin Alexander, Ruth Gibson, Mira Benjamin, Matthew Hunt, and Shibe. The work traces the swoops, slides, and vibrations from her famous recording of Puccini’s Vissi d’arte. Miller was an Artist-in-Focus at the 2023 Festival.
On 29 June Onyx Brass perform music by Manners McDade composer Emily Hall, showcasing two works featured on their 2023 NMC album The sun is free to flow with the sea: 4 ½-minute brass quintet Blackcurrant River and Eternity (2011), a transcription of a 3-minute choral work for two flugelhorns and French Horn.
Nick Pritchard and Ian Tindale showcase Imogen Holst’s song output on 27 June, with performances of her Weathers, Little think'st thou, poore flower and Four Songs – a 7-minute setting of verses from Tottel’s Miscellany (1557).
Benjamin Britten’s works, as ever, are mainstays of the Festival. Benjamin Appl and James Baillieu celebrate Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau’s centenary with the intense and sombre 22-minute cycle Songs and Proverbs of William Blake (22 June). On 26 June Owain Park conducts the BBC Singers in A.M.D.G. – Britten’s 17-minute setting of seven poems by Gerard Manley Hopkins from 1939. Ryan Wigglesworth and the Knussen Chamber Orchestra (15 June) take up a Britten work celebrating its half century in 2025 – the Suite on English Folk Tunes – ‘A time there was…’, a 14-minute selection of five traditional melodies, whose lively highlights include ‘Cakes and Ale’ and ‘Hunt the Squirrel’.