Snape Aldeburgh Festival 2 by Saunders, R., Berlioz, Wigglesworth, Debussy, Od (2016/2016), Dirigent Ryan Wigglesworth, Snape Maltings Concert Hall, Snape, United Kingdom

Debussy’s glittering ‘symphonic sketches’, their fleeting swell and ebb, sunrise and storm here seem inexorably tied to a French lineage of voluptuous orchestral colour and musical portraiture of the natural world. Wigglesworth’s reworking of his Aldeburgh commission for the Britten Centenary takes inspiration from the English Baroque, interspersing transcriptions of incidental music from Purcell’s forerunner Matthew Locke with his own shadowy distorted ‘doubles’. Shadows and echoes also abound in Rebecca Saunders’ arresting concerto, her trembling, hyperactive protagonist vividly, shockingly interrupted by torrents of orchestral sound before subsiding to a contemplative haunting stasis. This concert is promoted by Aldeburgh Music.