Britten Pears Arts reveals 2025 Aldeburgh Festival programme

Suffolk-based arts charity Britten Pears Arts has launched the programme for the 2025 Aldeburgh Festival. The upcoming festival features 20 world premieres across 17 days of events running from 13 to 29 June 2025.

The programme launch coincides with the charity’s submission of planning applications for the next step of its £13.8 million capital programme. The 2025 Festival will open with the world premiere of Colin Matthews’ new opera A Visit to Friends with libretto by William Boyd, and will welcome four featured artists – tenor Allan Clayton, violinist Leila Josefowicz, and composers Helen Grime and Daniel Kidane – to shape the 2025 programme.

Britten Pears Arts chief executive Andrew Comben said: ‘The 76th Aldeburgh Festival offers the opportunity to experience anew music’s transformative power to move, inspire, and connect. Joy, grief, love, loss and so much more, “dissolved in sound” by composers and the artists who bring their work to life.’

The theme of ‘dissolved in sound’ which pervades the 2025 programme, is drawn from Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound, in which he suggests that music can express what words alone cannot: ‘And, hark! their sweet sad voices! ’t is despair / Mingled with love and then dissolved in sound.’

This year’s programme sees the festival return to Snape Maltings’ Pumphouse and introduces Aldeburgh Festival Extra! a late-night series featuring artists in unexpected places. The Red House, Aldeburgh will house Spiritual Britten, an exhibition exploring the spiritual aspects of Britten’s life and music.

Former Britten Pears Young Artist and one of this year’s featured artists Allan Clayton is set to perform with the Knussen Chamber Orchestra and conductor Ryan Wigglesworth, Edward Gardner and the Royal Academy of Music Symphony Orchestra, the Dunedin Consort, the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Sakari Oramo and Antonio Pappano alongside the principal string players of the LSO.

Featured artist Helen Grime is also a former Britten Pears Young Artist. The 2025 festival service will feature Grime’s Missa Brevis performed by the Britten Pears Chamber Choir and Folk, a Britten Pears Arts co-commission from Helen Grime with a libretto by Zoe Gilbert, will premiere with the Knussen Chamber Orchestra and conductor Ryan Wigglesworth on 15 June. Grime also tutors Britten Pears Arts Young Artist composers and, during the festival her work Prayer will be performed alongside new works from six of her students.

Grime will join forces with fellow featured artist Leila Josefowicz who performs Grime's Violin Concerto with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and chief conductor Sakari Oramo. Josefowicz makes her Aldeburgh Festival and Snape Maltings debut in 2025 with a residency focusing on new music and featuring the world premiere of a new piece by Colin Matthews, Paraphrases, written especially for her and featuring brothers Huw and Paul Watkins.

Music by featured artist Daniel Kidane’s features in nine concerts in this year’s festival programme, including the festival service, and concerts by pianist Mishka Rushdie Momen, Edward Gardner and the Royal Academy of Music Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Singers and Sofi Jeannin and the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Sakari Oramo. His work also features in recitals by tenor Nick Pritchard, pianist Ian Tindale and the Carducci Quartet who give the first performance of Daniel Kidane’s new String Quartet – a Britten Pears Arts Commission, written for them in this year’s festival.

You can find the full programme for the 2025 Aldeburgh Festival here.