Britten and Bridge at Snape
Sunday 16 June at 4.00pm, Snape Bridge, Snape, East of England, IP17 1SP, United Kingdom
Adrian Brendel cello
Joanna MacGregor piano
Marta Fontanals-Simmons mezzo-soprano
Britten Sonata 18’
Imogen Holst The Fall of The Leaf for solo cello 9’
Harvey Songs and Haiku (UK premiere) 10’
Curve with Plateaux 12′
Britten Folk Songs for mezzo and piano: The Last Rose of Summer; O Waly, Waly; The Salley Gardens 11′
Bridge Sonata 22’
MacGregor and Brendel offer intimate music for cello and piano by Britten, his teacher, his assistant and his younger colleague. Large-scale sonatas bookend the programme – Britten’s punchy, richly characterised work written for his new friend Rostropovich to premiere at the 1961 Aldeburgh Festival, and Frank Bridge’s achingly beautiful piece of late-Romantic wistfulness composed during WWI.
In between, Imogen Holst’s cello solo alternates between plangent beauty and pizzicato passages aimed at sounding ‘like the lute of our friend Julian Bream’. Mezzo Fontanals-Simmons sings Britten Folksongs and songs by Jonathan Harvey.
Part of the Aldeburgh Festival.