News from
The Red House Aldeburgh Britten—Pears Foundation | www.brittenpears.org | Autumn 2112
Britten 100 begins One of the most widely-celebrated composer anniversaries ever is underway. Britten 100, the global celebration of Benjamin Britten's centenary, has begun, launched by the Britten-Pears Foundation (BPF) at the Britten Theatre of London’s Royal College of Music. With many events still to be announced it is already clear that Britten 100 is an unprecedented collaboration of leading international organisations from the performing arts, publishing, education, broadcasting, film and heritage. From audiences of the most famous concert halls and opera houses in 30 countries to school children across the UK and beyond, millions will join in the celebrations. The 100th birthday falls on 22 November 2013, but the official centenary period includes the two full concert seasons either side of 2013, ending in August 2014.
At the launch BPF Director General Richard Jarman considered why so many people are coming together to celebrate this man and his work: ‘Britten wrote an incredible range of music: grand operas; chamber operas suitable for easy touring; symphonic and choral music, chamber music and song cycles of great individuality; music for great public occasions, but also, crucially, music for children and amateurs, great community pieces.
He believed that music should be written to appeal directly to the listener, and wrote some of the most approachable music of the 20th century. On the other hand he tackles difficult subjects without sentimentality and his work has a universal appeal because of its truth.
His music had enormous international impact during his lifetime and changed the perception of British music throughout the world. He believed passionately that young people needed to be taught about and engage with music, and he was at the forefront of musical education. For all these reasons, his music probably reached more people in his lifetime than any other composer. His recording of the War Requiem sold 300,000 copies in its first year, an unheard-of phenomenon during the 1960s. He truly was a household name. On social issues he was also ahead of his time and displayed remarkable moral courage. He and Peter Pears were the first publicly recognized gay couple in a very difficult era. All of these qualities make Britten a major figure of the 20th century. BPF is investing £6.5m in the celebrations so that – with the help of the many organisations taking part in Britten 100 – people all over the world will listen to, and participate, in his music.’
Britten—Pears Foundation | www.brittenpears.org
The Red House | Autumn 2012
Introducing www.britten100.org The global clearing-house for information about the Britten centenary is now online. Find out how it can help you spread the word about your events and activities.
Reflecting Britten’s global appeal and the international range of the centenary celebrations, the site is multilingual: much of the content is available in German, French, Spanish, Russian, Chinese and Japanese.
In the New to Britten? section the Britten audio sampler lets users of all ages explore more than 100 works through 300 clips – 9 hours of music in all – searching by mood, genre, tempo, instrument, text authors, date and popularity (as voted by users of the site). There is also a short video introducing the man himself and links for anyone tempted to visit East Anglia, the place that inspired Britten all his life. The official website for the Britten centenary is now fully up and running at www.britten100.org. At its heart is a comprehensive database of Britten performances and other events (such as conferences, exhibitions, etc). Basic listings for many performances are automatically added from databases maintained by Boosey & Hawkes and Faber Music, but we encourage anyone planning any kind of centenary activity to check whether it is listed. Follow
the What’s going on? link from the homepage and use the search form. If your event is already there you can add an image, website URL and free text using the additional information form. If it is not yet listed, there is a form for you to tell us about an event. Please do use the Britten 100 logo on your own website and link to the site. The more organizations that do this, the more we can raise the profile of the centenary to everyone’s benefit.
The Media section (accessible from anywhere on the site via the footer) has lots of useful resources for the media and PR/marketing colleagues, including the official Britten 100 logo, images and stock video for media use, and PDFs of relevant press releases. If your organization is promoting Britten events please do make sure that the right people know about the centenary website and use the events database, official logo and other resources to reach a global audience of Britten fans.
Britten—Pears Foundation | www.brittenpears.org
The Red House | Autumn 2012
Britten 100 highlights month-by-month More than 1000 events are already listed on the www.britten100.org database, with many more still to be announced for the 2013-14 concert season. The centenary will also be celebrated in books, films, broadcasts, recordings, exhibitions and educational projects. Here is a guide to just some of them. October 2012
November 2012
First ever Britten opera performance in Beijing, and four classic films in a new box set
Britten the first composer honoured on a British coin
Northern Ireland Opera is taking Oliver Mears’ production of Noye’s Fludde to Beijing, where – supported by the KT Wong Foundation – it will become the first Britten opera staged in mainland China. The production was first performed in the striking setting of Belfast Zoo.
LETTERS FROM A LIFE The Selected Letters of Benjamin Britten Volume Six 1966 –1976 Edited by Philip Reed & Mervyn Cooke
BRITTEN
IN PICTURES
Britten’s contribution to British cultural life receives national recognition on a new 50 pence coin to be unveiled by the Royal Mint in November for general circulation in the UK in 2013. Coin collectors around the world will be able to buy commemorative versions including various precious metal ones minted to order. www.royalmint.com The sixth and final volume of Letters from a Life, Britten’s selected correspondence edited by Philip Reed and Mervyn Cooke, is published by Boydell & Brewer. So too is Britten in Pictures, which draws on the photo archive at The Red House and is edited by BPF’s Lucy Walker. Faber & Faber brings out a special centenary edition of John Bridcut’s pocket guide, Essential Britten, including Britten’s Aspen Award speech. www.boydellandbrewer.com; www.faber.co.uk
December 2012 A choral world premiere in Oxford and a US dance premiere
NI Opera’s production of Noye’s Fludde in Belfast Zoo. Photo: NI Opera/Jonathan Hession.
The award-winning 1979 documentary A Time There Was is just one of four DVDs in a special centenary box set from director Tony Palmer. Also included is Britten and his Festival, which follows the preparations for the Aldeburgh Festival in 1967, when the Festival expanded into Snape Maltings Concert Hall. Britten's recording – in Orford Church – of The Burning Fiery Furnace and a 1980 film of Death in Venice complete the set.
Britten in Oxford (BriO), a year-long programme of concerts and study weekends, gets underway with the first performance of a 1931 choral work, Two Psalms, conducted by artistic director Nicholas Cleobury. www.britteninoxford.co.uk Choreographer Richard Alston’s new work, danced to Britten’s A Ceremony of Carols, receives its US premiere at Montclair State University’s Peak Performances festival. Alston’s dance company will be joined by the Prima Voce choir and harpist André Tarantiles. www.peakperfs.org
www.benjamin-britten-dvd.com Photo: Tony Nandi.
Britten—Pears Foundation | www.brittenpears.org
Britten 100 highlights month-by-month cont. from page 3
January 2013 BBC’s year of Britten centenary celebrations begins
Photo: Shutterstock.
The BBC, which played a significant part in Britten’s career from as early as 1933, marks his centenary with Britten on the BBC, a year of dedicated programming across BBC Radio 3, BBC Four television, the BBC Proms and the various BBC Performing Groups. The latter will perform seventeen major Britten concerts around the UK, starting with four January dates in Cardiff, Manchester and London. Also in January BBC Radio 3 broadcasts the recent ENO production of Billy Budd, the first in a series of broadcasts that will cover every Britten opera over the course of 2013. All the radio broadcasts will be available worldwide via the BBC iPlayer. www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer
The Red House | Autumn 2012
March 2013 An opera premiere in Brazil and celebrations begin in Britten’s birthplace The first of the productions supported by BPF’s major Britten 100 awards get underway in March with the Brazilian premiere of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Theatro Municipal de São Palo and Parque Lage in Rio de Janeiro. The production is part of TRANSFORM, a four-year Anglo-Brazilian cultural collaboration supported by the British Council and intended to bridge the London and Rio Olympic Games. Also supported by a Britten 100 award, a new Gloriana opens at Hamburg State Opera. Directed by Richard Jones, it is a co-production with the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, where it will return in June for the first time since the work was premiered there in 1953 to mark the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. www.hamburgischestaatsoper.de and www.roh.org.uk Meanwhile the centenary celebrations begin in earnest in Suffolk, the English county where Britten spent most of his life. Aldeburgh Music’s Easter weekend features the music of Britten and Purcell. www.aldeburgh.co.uk
Also starting this month the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Birmingham International Concert Season and choral ensemble Ex Cathedra join forces for a city-wide Britten celebration, mostly in January and February under the heading A Boy Was Born. ww.birminghambritten.co.uk EMI Classics will release ten Britten albums between now and the end of 2013, with three new releases including a new War Requiem conducted by Sir Antonio Pappano, and Britten songs performed by Ian Bostridge, accompanied by Pappano and guitarist Xuefei Yang. Bostridge stars in the first of the new releases, The Rape of Lucretia, alongside Angelika Kirchschlager and Peter Coleman-Wright in a 2011 recording conducted by Oliver Knussen. www.emiclassics.com
February 2013 The first major Britten biography in twenty years One of the publishing highlights of the Britten centenary will be a new biography by the conductor Paul Kildea, published in the UK by Allen Lane. www.penguincatalogue.co.uk
Just before Easter BPF launches the Britten Trail, a walking trail that will help visitors explore the town and landscape that so inspired the composer, interpreted through map leaflets, guide books and an audio tour, all created with the help of local groups. An online evocation of the trail will give fans everywhere a taste of Britten’s Aldeburgh. BPF is also working with the community in Lowestoft, the town where Britten was born. From Easter the popular Princess Royal Fountain will feature a sound and light show including music that the young Britten wrote nearby at the family home. Pupils from the Benjamin Britten High School are preparing local history displays around the town and designing fifty colourful banners to create a ‘Britten Prom’ along the seafront promenade.
Also in February New York City Opera takes Britten’s taut adaptation of Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw to the BAM Howard Gilman Opera House in a new production directed by Sam Buntrock. www.nycopera.com Another new production of the same work, this one directed by Alessandro Talevi for the Israeli Opera in Tel Aviv, also opens in February. www.israel-opera.co.il
These initiatives in Suffolk are part of wider projects supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund and Arts Council England. www.brittenpears.org
Britten—Pears Foundation | www.brittenpears.org
All four leading Scottish orchestras join forces The Scottish Chamber Orchestra, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Royal Scottish National Orchestra and Scottish Ensemble are working together to present a fortnight of events: the Scottish Orchestras’ Guide to Benjamin Britten. Also in April Sir Simon Rattle conducts Noye’s Fludde as part of a day celebrating the tenth anniversary of the Berlin Philharmonic’s education programme. In June he conducts War Requiem in Berlin and Sinfonietta in Vienna, the latter with players from both Berlin and Vienna Philharmonics. www.berliner-philharmoniker.de
Sir Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. Photo: Monika Rittershaus.
May 2013
A highlight of the whole centenary will be the Aldeburgh Festival of Music and the Arts, the 66th since Britten and Pears founded it in 1948, now run by Aldeburgh Music. See page 8 for details of Aldeburgh Music’s year-long centenary programme, including Peter Grimes on Aldeburgh beach in June. www.aldeburgh.co.uk
Benjamin Britten Centenary Programme
April 2013
The Red House | Autumn 2012
1913
B R I TT E N lives here 2013
Meanwhile at The Red House in Aldeburgh, where Britten lived and worked for much of his life, BPF is spending £4.7m to open up the site as never before, generously supported by £1.4m from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF). A purposebuilt new home for Britten’s outstanding archive is taking shape, designed by architects Stanton Williams (who have just won the prestigious RIBA Stirling Prize for their recent Sainsbury Laboratory at the University of Cambridge.) The Archive Centre opens in June, along with new visitor facilities in the existing buildings. The studio where Britten wrote masterpieces such as War Requiem will be recreated, and highlights from BPF’s collections will be on show in an inspiring new exhibition about the man and his music. www.brittenpears.org
DECCA releases the definitive box set of Britten recordings
Design for the new exhibition at The Red House. Image: GuM/Pringle Richards Sharratt Architects.
July 2013 A Chilean premiere and the first complete Britten catalogue Britten and Peter Pears with DECCA producer John Culshaw, 1966. Photo: Hans Wild.
For nearly three decades Britten recorded exclusively for DECCA, covering most of his major works. Some were recorded by other conductors, such as Steuart Bedford, in close consultation with the composer. In May the label releases a 40-CD (tbc) box set, the DECCA Britten Edition. Britten’s recordings of works by other composers are an important part of his legacy, and DECCA is also releasing a Britten the Performer box set. www.deccaclassics.com
In another country premiere made possible by BPF’s Britten 100 awards Santiago Opera gives the first performance of Billy Budd in Chile, in a new production that will also go to Buenos Aires, Argentina. www.municipal.cl For the past six years, BPF has been working on a Britten Thematic Catalogue covering both published and unpublished works. In July the completed resource is unveiled at a conference at Nottingham University, and becomes the first fully online thematic catalogue of any composer. www.brittenpears.org
June 2013 A Russian premiere and a very special Aldeburgh Festival Britten’s The Prodigal Son was inspired by a Rembrandt painting in the Hermitage, and dedicated to Shostakovich, but has never been performed in Russia. With support from BPF’s Britten 100 awards Mahogany Opera will give the work’s Russian premiere in the Hermitage Theatre, before performing all three Church Parables as a triptych over two days at St Ekaterina’s Lutheran Church, St Petersburg. The triptych will also be performed in the original venue, Orford Church, and during July’s City of London Festival. www.mahoganyopera.org.uk
2006 Mahogany Opera production of Curlew River, Blythburgh Church. Photo: Mahogany Opera.
Britten—Pears Foundation | www.brittenpears.org
The Red House | Autumn 2012
July – August 2013
November 2013
Two leading US festivals with strong Britten connections
A major Britten festival in Moscow, and the 100th birthday on 22 November Britten’s connections with Russian musicians were among the most important of his life. BPF and the British Council are working together on a festival in Moscow in the autumn of 2013 to celebrate this significant connection. The festival will feature an exhibition about Britten at the Pushkin Museum that will include artworks from The Red House, organized at the instigation of the Director, Mme Irina Antonova. She knew major Soviet musicians such as Sviatoslav Richter, with whom she founded the Museum’s celebrated December Nights festival.
There will be a major focus on Britten’s music during the 2013 Aspen Music Festival and School season. Under the overarching programming theme Conscience and Beauty, the season focuses on composers in society: John Adams, Beethoven, Berg, Bernstein, Brahms, Debussy, Górecki, Mahler, Mozart, Pärt, Shostakovich, Strauss, Schoenberg – and Britten, winner of the first Robert O. Anderson Aspen Award in the Humanities. Collecting the award (above) in 1964, Britten set out in fascinating detail his views on ‘the composer’s duty, as a member of society, to speak to or for his fellow human beings.’ www.aspenmusicfestival.com Tanglewood Music Festival will include late July/early August performances of Curlew River, directed by Mark Morris and paired with the choreographer’s dance adaptation of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas. The musicians will all be Fellows of the Tanglewood Music Center. Further Britten-themed programming will be announced next year. www.bso.org
September 2013 Britten in the Southbank Centre’s The Rest is Noise festival In 2013 London’s Southbank Centre is mounting a yearlong, multi-artform festival based on Alex Ross’ bestselling exploration of twentieth-century music. In September Vladimir Jurowski leads the London Philharmonic Orchestra in a concert performance of Peter Grimes in the Royal Festival Hall (and also Birmingham’s Symphony Hall), with Stuart Skelton as Grimes, Pamela Armstrong as Ellen Orford and Alan Opie as Balstrode. This is closely followed in October by: War Requiem with Ian Bostridge, Tatiana Monogarova and Matthias Goerne; Nocturne sung by Mark Padmore; and Truls Mørk joining the orchestra for Britten’s Cello Symphony. www.southbankcentre.co.uk
Britten conducting the premiere of his Cello Symphony in the Great Hall, Moscow Conservatory, 1964.
The Britten festival will also feature events at the Moscow Conservatoire, where Britten conducted the premiere of his Cello Symphony with Mstislav Rostropovich. Gennadi Rozhdestvensky will conduct the Russian premiere of Death in Venice, starring Ian Bostridge, who will also lead performances of the five Canticles. There will also be four concerts given by the Russian National Orchestra, conducted by Mikhail Pletnev, Sir Mark Elder and Vassily Petrenko. Aldeburgh Music’s centenary programme culminates with a weekend of music in collaboration with BBC Radio 3 over 22-24 November 2013 (see page 8). Also over the same weekend, BPF’s community local history project in Lowestoft is rounded off with an invitation to look around Britten’s birthplace, now the hotel Britten House, which will be open to visitors. Earlier in the month the Barbican’s Britten celebrations include a major symposium curated by John Bridcut and combining film screenings, talks, panel discussions and performances. www.barbican.org.uk
October 2013 Touring opera, with a new Lucretia from Glyndebourne A year of extensive Britten programming from Opera North culminates in a season of mainstage touring productions, including a new Death in Venice and revivals of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and an award-winning Peter Grimes. Also touring from October 2012 is a new production of The Rape of Lucretia from Glyndebourne Touring Opera - the first time the work has appeared at Glyndebourne since its premiere there in 1946. www.glyndebourne.com
Britten’s birthplace - 21 Kirkley Cliff Road, Lowestoft - now the hotel Britten House.
Britten—Pears Foundation | www.brittenpears.org
The Red House | Autumn 2012
Repertoire Paul Spicer, author of a new guide to Britten’s choral music, calls on choirs to look beyond the familiar favourites.
Britten Choral Guide with Repertoire Notes by Paul Spicer
1
Benjamin Britten was a unique force in British music. Of the fine composers among his contemporaries, none wrote such a wide variety of music across such a broad spectrum of genres and for such a range of ages and abilities. In many ways, though he might have been surprised by the comparison, he was the natural successor to Vaughan Williams, whose instincts for community and the nurture of amateur musicians brought him an almost cult-like status in Britain. Britten did not devote himself so wholeheartedly to these things, but a sizeable proportion of his choral music is easily within the reach of a good ordinary choir, another part is well within the grasp of a reasonable church choir, and there is, of course, all the music he wrote specifically for children. Among the 60 or so non-operatic choral works there are also works which are exceptionally demanding and perhaps best left to professionals and outstanding amateurs. The range of this output and the frequency of performance of the better-known works underline Britten's ubiquity in the world of choral singing, not just in the English-speaking community but far beyond. As with many composers who have devoted themselves to writing a large corpus of music for one particular genre, Britten has suffered from being too well-known for a few familiar
pieces. Rejoice in the Lamb, Hymn to the Virgin, A Ceremony of Carols, Hymn to St Cecilia, Jubilate Deo in C and others have tended to obscure the fuller picture of Britten's choral output. If nothing else, I hope that choral directors will look beyond their favourites and explore the rich variety of music which is still almost undiscovered. Schools, or choirs of upper or lower voices, will find music of wonderful quality which rarely sees the light of day. Similarly, there is a genuine mix of sacred and secular and some useful blurring of the edges where words can be equally appropriate in either context. I hope that the guide will also be of real practical help to those who aim to build programmes structured in specific ways - thematically, by voice type, by religious or non-religious setting, or by the balancing of a wellknown piece by a less-familiar or almost unknown work. It is a spirit of discovery and adventure which should fire the imagination, and it is a love of all this music which has inspired the commentary writing. Britten was a practical composer. He knew the music he wrote was performable because he himself was an accomplished professional musician. This is, again, where the Vaughan Williams analogy holds true. To be there, in among those doing the singing, directing the performance, advising other conductors and acquiring great expertise and experience over a creative lifetime, gave him an unusual insight into what choirs enjoy singing. He discovered what levels were attainable by different types of group, and did much to encourage that sense of ambition which has led to a genuine rise in the quality of amateur choral music-making.
The Britten Choral Guide is now available free online, as is Paul Kildea’s guide for performers and programmers across the genres, Britten Connections. Go to www.britten100.org/ whos-celebrating/get-involved
Britten audio sampler Explore the whole range of Britten’s output on our new audio sampler. More than 300 clips from over 100 works and seven ways to search. Go to www.britten100.org
Britten Choral Guide, Britten Connections and Britten Opera guide Promotional copies of these guides are free to relevant music organisations and individual performers. To order, contact Kevin Gosling: k.gosling@brittenpears.org
Britten—Pears Foundation | www.brittenpears.org
The Red House | Autumn 2012
A Musical Eye
A Musical Eye
The Visual World of Britten and
Pears
A new book explores the visual world of Britten and Pears Anyone who has visited The Red House will have been struck by the range and quality of art collected by Britten and, in particular, by Peter Pears. A new book, edited by former BPF Curator Judith LeGrove, features more than 200 works from this collection and also considers the wider importance of art and design in their lives and work. The current Curator at The Red House, Caroline Harding, draws on correspondence in the BPF archive to explore the patronage by Britten and Pears of a wide range of artists.
Julian Potter writes on the friendship between his mother, the artist Mary Potter, and Britten. Broadening the scope of the visual arts, architectural historian Alan Powers considers the buildings commissioned or modified by Britten and Pears. There are also chapters on: Britten and Bloomsbury; Britten’s work for film; Sidney Nolan’s artistic responses to Britten’s music; and the designs for Britten’s stage works, most notably by John Piper. Publisher: Artist Choice Editions. www.artists-choice-editions.com
Aldeburgh Music news Shoel Stadlen rounds up the Britten centenary programme of BPF’s sister organisation, Aldeburgh Music. ‘I am native. Rooted here’ Peter Grimes
Britten’s centenary will be marked by special events all over the world, but none will be more distinctive than those held in Aldeburgh, the Suffolk coastal town where Britten, inspired by its timeless landscape, lived and worked for most of his life. Aldeburgh is the beating heart of Britten’s wideranging legacy – the Festival he founded, the iconic Snape Maltings Concert Hall, the many opportunities for young talent and the archive – which combine to create one of the great musical centres of the world. Aldeburgh Music’s tribute to Britten, its founder, will begin in November with the launch of Friday Afternoons – a nationwide initiative that will involve up-to 75,000 young people across the UK. The celebrations continue with A Ceremony of Carols at Aldeburgh Parish Church in early December, and PLACE in February 2013 – a cross-arts weekend exploring the theme of roots through the lens of Britten and Suffolk, including a commissioned sound work by Chris Watson inspired by Britten’s daily composing walks In 2013, the annual Easter Weekend features the music of Britten, as well as that of Purcell, whose music left such an indelible stamp on Britten. In May Ian Bostridge will be joined by collaborators from the worlds of theatre and visual arts to present Britten’s dramatic concert works, The Canticles.
The 2013 Aldeburgh Festival of Music and the Arts, founded by Britten and Pears in 1948 opens on Friday 7 June. Envisioned by its founders as a Festival with a strong sense of place, where the most talented emerging and established musicians could be inspired, the 66th Aldeburgh Festival continues the tradition with its unique combination of international artists and aspiring musicians.
www.aldeburgh.co.uk/britten The month-long Snape Proms homes in on Britten for four days in August. Performances include his Cello Symphony, Winter Words (based on Hardy’s poems), as well as A Charm of Lullabies, while folk musician and composer Jon Boden joins friends to weave new and traditional music around Britten’s choral folk ballad Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard. The centenary month of November begins with the return of Yoshi Oida’s award-winning 2007 Aldeburgh Festival production of Death in Venice, revived by Opera North, leading up to the birthday weekend itself (Friday 22 – Sunday 24 November) which will be presented in association with BBC Radio 3 with broadcasts from Aldeburgh throughout the weekend. The pinnacles of the weekend will be the Centenary Concert conducted by Oliver Knussen, who first met Britten as a child, and a production of Noye’s Fludde in Britten’s birthplace: Lowestoft.
Photo: Mykel Nicolaou.
Highlights of the Festival include performances of Peter Grimes in staged productions on Aldeburgh beach and concert performances in Snape Maltings Concert Hall, with a complementary Grimes trail through the town devised by Punchdrunk, and the Church Parables in Orford Church, where they were premiered, as well as a wealth of new commissions, and a celebration of Britten’s music through dance.
Britten–Pears Foundation The Red House Golf Lane Aldeburgh, Suffolk IP15 5PZ, UK + 44 1728 451700 Registered charity 295595 To subscribe, unsubscribe or update your contact details, please e-mail reveal@brittenpears.org