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SEQUENZA21/
340 W. 57th Street, 12B, New York, NY 10019

Zookeeper:   
Jerry Bowles
(212) 582-3791

Managing Editor:
David Salvage

Contributing Editors:

Galen H. Brown
Evan Johnson
Ian Moss
Lanier Sammons
Deborah Kravetz
(Philadelphia)
Eric C. Reda
(Chicago)
Christian Hertzog
(San Diego)
Jerry Zinser
(Los Angeles)

Web & Wiki Master:
Jeff Harrington


Latest Posts

Lest We Forget
Serial Underground at Cornelia St. Cafe Monday
Unhappy the Land That Needs a Hero
East Anglia 1953 - New Orleans 2005
Apocalypse Now
Only in New York
They're Trying to Wash Us Away
A Rush of Paws
Rhythm Is It!
Last Night in L.A. - Getting Ready for Next Season


 

Record companies, artists and publicists are invited to submit CDs to be considered for review. Send to: Jerry Bowles, Editor, Sequenza 21, 340 W. 57th Street, 12B, New York, NY 10019


Sunday, September 11, 2005
Music will rise from the wreckage....

It was a dark night, but as we came over the brow of the hill the sky was lit up by an orange glow, with a trial of thick smoke. If this was dramatic, seen from close to it was positively theatrical. Above our heads the black shell of the Maltings loomed like the flank of a stricken liner..... In the foreground, silhouetted against the bright lights, members of the English Opera Group chorus were collapsing into each other's arms. It was a devastating event, of course, but one whose aftermath - the triumphant rescue of the Idomeneo premiere at Blythburgh, and the Maltings rebuilding for the very next Festival - swiftly became part of the Aldeburgh legend.

Continuing with the theme of finding inspiration and renewal from events of the past Music Will Rise From The Wreckage looks at the 1969 and 1970 Aldeburgh Festivals, and the devastating fire which destroyed the newly built Snape Maltings concert hall on the first day of the 1969 Festival. (Picture to right shows Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears surveying the wreckage of the concert hall. The eyewitness account above is by pianist and accompanist Roger Vignoles from Autograph Books' Time & Concord - Aldeburgh Festival Recollections).

Through superhuman efforts by Britten and the Festival Committee not only did the 1969 Festival go ahead with the loss of only one concert, but the concert hall was completely rebuilt for the 1970 season. The vintage programme for that Festival included two performaces of a new production of the Rape of Lucretia, and three of Curlew River.

The rebuilt Maltings that year was also the venue for the first performance of Shostakovich's Fourteenth Symphony outside Russia. It was conducted by its dedicatee Britten, and performed with the two soloists for whom it was written, Galina Vishnevskaya and Mark Rezhetin. Other Festival concerts included the world premiere of Hans Werner Henze's vivid theatre piece about a runaway Cuban slave, El Cimarron, conducted by the composer. Guitarist and composer Leo Brouwer continued the Cuban theme with a concert of music from his native Cuba featuring a political sub-text.

On An Overgrown Path has the full story of those two extraordinary Aldeburgh Festivals, and tells how Music Will Rise From The Wreckage.

 



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