Day 6. We started the day by purchasing some train tickets that we need for trips we are taking in a couple of weeks. We bought them from the ticket office in Ipswich, and the bloke who was serving us was curious about why we came to Ipswich. When we told him that we were in the UK to go to a music festival in Aldeburgh, he was astonished that anyone would travel all the way from Australia to a music festival in the UK! He said that we should have been there for the Ashes. He was a West Indian man and was a cricket fanatic, but not too proud of his West Indian cricket history in the last few years!
After a bus ride of about an hour and a half, we arrived in Aldeburgh, where we are staying for the music festival. The bus ride meandered through various villages along the way, which is why the trip took so long. We arrived in Aldeburgh, which is a very pretty sea side village, with the main street (High Street) lined with little boutique shops and restaurants and cottages above the shops. High Street is two streets back from the beach, and we are staying in an apartment in Crabbe Street, which is one street back from the beach. We can see the beach from the loungeroom. The beach is pebbly rather than sandy.
We arrived too early to check into our apartment, so we went down the High Street in search of lunch. We had the most delicious spicy sweet potato soup, sitting outside a delightful little café which adjoins a shop that sells all locally grown produce and fresh fish. Two young couples came and sat down at the table next to us, and we started chatting with them. They are performing in the Benjamin Britten’s famous opera Peter Grimes which is being performed twice as concert performances in a concert hall and will be performed three times as the staged opera on the beach. Peter Grimes is a fisherman and the story revolves around Peter and his succession of apprentice boys. The mysterious light and dark of Peter Grimes closely reflects that of the North Sea off the Suffolk Coast. The changing drama and sky, sea and shingle resonates directly with the action of the opera. The two concert performances are being recorded and the recording of the orchestra is being played back for the beach performances, with the singers performing live at the beach (in costume). We are going to one of the concert performances on Sunday night, and haven’t bought tickets for the beach. The weather here is very cold and windy and the closer you get to the beach, the stronger the wind becomes. The performers we were chatting to over lunch, said the wind presents some interesting challenges for the beach performances. Fingers crossed for them. If we open the windows of our lounge room, we should be able to hear it.
So far, I haven’t taken any photos of the village, because of the blustery weather. When I have some photos, I will put one on the blog.
After doing a spot of grocery shopping from some of the little shops, we finished the evening with dinner in one of the local hotels.
Day 7. Today we did a bit more shopping for local goodies to eat in our apartment, had a nice lunch back at the same café as yesterday, then we got ready for our first concert. We caught a bus to Blythburgh Church, a very old church that was used for performances of Britten’s music during his lifetime. The concert was performed by the Latvian Radio Choir, who were absolutely amazing. The concert began and ended with pieces by Jonathan Harvey (who lived from 1939 – 2012). The composer described his work as being stimulated by involvement in two different communities (Winchester Cathedral where his son sang, and working at the Paris Centre for electroacoustic music.) The major work on the program used choir, flute and cello and used electronics and speakers all around the church, to transform and spatialise instrumental and vocal sound. The cellist plays for much of the second half of the piece playing a second cello which is prepared with the four strings tuned to C and G an octave below the normal pitches, with the strings loosened so they reverberate, creating the most amazing sound. The works were absolutely incredible and extremely difficult! They must have taken months to rehearse. By contrast, the program also included familiar works by Byrd, Tallis, Weelkes and Tomkins, that those of us in Oriana have sung many times.
We were sitting in the front row and could see every nuance, and interaction with the conductor etc. The Harvey works were so difficult, that all the choristers had tuning forks that they were constantly using throughout the performance. Without the tuning forks, it would have been almost impossible to find your entry notes, as there was so much going on with all the other acoustic effects. The audience reaction to the concert was very enthusiastic.
We met a couple from Chesterfield, and chatted to them on the bus to and from the concert. They said they have been coming to the Aldeburgh music festival for the last 24 years! We will no doubt be seeing a lot of them over the coming days.
