Roderick Williams embraces Aldeburgh’s sense of adventure

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There are some performances that people never forget. For Roderick Williams, a baritone of inimitable common sense and evident coolness, the production of the opera by Gerald Barry The triumph of beauty and deception at the Aldeburgh Festival in 2002 it tops the list.

Two decades later, just the thought still makes his hair stand on end. “It’s a scary piece, difficult to sing and a tough experience even for the audience,” he says, “but I got into it and I really like it. Imagine me in a skintight white PVC miniskirt, knee-high boots, a huge wig and covered in fake blood and chocolate smeared over my body, singing one of the hardest tunes I’ve ever faced, while standing over a coffin, rehearsing for do not fall. This is the sort of thing you do in Aldeburgh.

Well, maybe – it’s been 20 years without anything remotely like it being seen again, but Williams has made his point: the Aldeburgh Festival has a sense of adventure that few others in the UK can match.

This summer, more than 45 years after the death of the festival’s co-founder, composer Benjamin Britten, Aldeburgh continues to push the boundaries, introducing new composers, new music and new ideas about music in performance. Williams is a featured artist this year and has his own imaginative plans to vary the usual expectations.

“I made some proposals, more or less on the back of an envelope, and Roger Wright [chief executive of Britten Pears Arts, which runs the festival] she said yes to all of them,” Williams says. “It is so unusual in our business for someone to say yes without qualification – no budget cuts, no compromises in my vision. Being so artistically oriented, Roger is able to make your dreams come true in full. This is the Aldeburgh way.

One example is a protest song recital, for which Williams wanted not one singer but two, and also spoken readings. The idea is to present the audience with songs they feel they know well but in a new context. “We have a very good idea of ​​what we mean by protest songs,” Williams says. “Mostly we have modern images in our heads, from the 60s or 70s, taking the Vietnam War, Greenham Common and folk-inspired music like Bob Dylan. But what does it mean to protest in song? More generally, it can simply mean transmitting a message or a desire to be heard”, which he feels so much in the small environmental tragedy of a trout trapped by man in a Schubert Lied to as in Dylan. (This protest song recital will also travel to London’s Spitalfields Festival on June 30.)

Among other events in Williams’ selection are new works and new versions of old ones. She will join the London Symphony for the premiere of the new piece orchestrated by Sally Beamish Four songs from Hafezsettings by the 14th century Persian lyric poet, and to be followed by the premiere by Ryan Wigglesworth Vignettes by Jules Renard with the Knussen Chamber Orchestra.

Alongside these is Schubert’s arrangement of Williams Die schöne Müllerin for baritone and string quartet and an intriguing concert by the Marian Consort. This will combine music by 16th-century Portuguese composer Vicente Lusitano, believed to be the first composer of African descent to be published, and a tribute to Lusitano by Williams himself. “This is an act of love on my part,” he says. “Why has Lusitano’s music been overlooked? Is it due to the color of his skin? It’s the same [fate that befell] women composers whose work is now coming to the fore?

In the breadth of his musical experience, Williams is something of a Renaissance man. Like some of the leading performers of the previous generation, such as Janet Baker and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, he has gained equal fame in opera, concert and song recital, and beyond that he is becoming recognized as a composer in his own right.

Around 20 million people in the UK recently had the chance to see Williams’ double act when he appeared as both performer and composer at the the coronation of King Charles III. He says the invitations surprised him, not least because they came from different people at different times. “I received a call from Andrew Nethsingha [who was in charge of the coronation’s music] about a week before Christmas. He said, ‘Can I talk to you confidentially about something?’ I have two grandchildren in [Westminster Abbey] choir . . . and I thought it was about them. Instead, I was completely blown away when she announced that he had just been to see Her Majesty and I was invited to sing at the coronation.

His impressive solo appearance in Henry Walford Davies’ Comfort it was far too short, also because he seemed to be really enjoying himself. That winking contribution had been preceded in the opening concert by a composition by him, the central panel (joined by two other composers) by Be you my vision – a triptych for orchestrainspirational music that surely demands to be transformed into something greater so as not to be forgotten.

Other recent compositions include a celebration for the 2018 centenary of the RAF, named after its motto, Per ardua ad astraand a new work this summer for the anthem’s 250th anniversary “Amazing Grace”.

“There’s a lot of anticipation in our business,” he says, “in airports, on planes, in hotels. A long-haul flight can last a precious four or five hours with an uninterrupted train of thought for a composer. . . I used to write songs to perform on my own, so it was a magical time where friends took my songs and made them more than the sum of what was on the page.

Perhaps this helped inform Williams’ humility. “I have no illusions about seeking immortality as a composer,” he says. “If history passes me by and in a few generations no one knows my music, that’s fine with me. Now I like conductors and singers who perform my music. I am enjoying my music in the present.

Aldeburgh Festival 2023 opens on 9 June, www.brittenpearsarts.org

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