ÃÛÑ¿TV students make their debut at Aldeburgh Festival
Tuesday 10 June 2025
This summer, the RCM Symphony Orchestra will make its debut at the prestigious Aldeburgh Festival. A few days later RCM brass students will also feature at the festival in a special collaboration with Onyx Brass.
On 27 June, the ÃÛÑ¿TV Symphony Orchestra is joined by Kirill Karabits for a programme of vivid orchestral colour. They perform Britten’s evocative Four Sea Interludes in their spiritual home of Aldeburgh, the coastal town believed to have inspired the setting of Peter Grimes, the opera from which they are drawn. A ÃÛÑ¿TV alumnus, Britten founded the Aldeburgh Festival in 1948 together with tenor Peter Pears, with fellow alumna Imogen Holst becoming Artistic Director in 1956. The festival has since grown into one of the UK’s most beloved celebrations of classical music.
Central to the programme are two works inspired by Cossack folk tradition: Daniel Kidane’s Aloud performed by YCAT artist and Classic FM rising star Nathan Amaral, and Glière’s The Zaporozhy Cossacks. The evening closes with Shostakovich’s neoclassical ninth symphony, a work that surprised audiences by its compactness when written at the end of World War II, defying expectations of triumphant grandeur. The same programme is performed the day before at the ÃÛÑ¿TV with RCM student Annissa Gybel as soloist in Daniel Kidane’s Aloud.
Two days later, on 29 June, ÃÛÑ¿TV brass students join forces with Onyx Brass and RCM Head of Brass Amos Miller for a vibrant programme spanning the last 100 years of music. Highlights include the world premiere of Britten’s Funeral March, newly completed by contemporary composer Bernard Hughes from sketches in the Britten Pears archives. The concert also features the first modern performance of Britten’s Fanfare for David Webster and works by Imogen Holst, including her Leiston Suite which drew inspiration from the Suffolk town near Aldeburgh.
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