Aldeburgh Festival, UK

Founded by Benjamin Britten, Peter Pears and Eric Crozier in 1948 as a ‘modest festival with a few concerts given by friends’, the Aldeburgh Festival has become one of Europe’s leading music festivals. The centrepiece of  2014 is a rare new production of  Britten’s pacifist opera, Owen Wingrave , with four performances (13, 15, 16, 18 June), a screening of the original BBC TV production (16 June) filmed at Snape in 1970, and a Study Day (17 June).
 
Other highlights include a Chamber Orchestra of Europe residency, a feature on composer Tristan Murail, An Aldeburgh Musicircus, performers including the Arcanto Quartet, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Ian Bostridge, the CBSO and Thomas Adès, Richard Goode, the Monteverdi Choir and John Eliot Gardiner, Mark Padmore and Ryan Wigglesworth, Klangforum Wien, and Masaaki Suzuki, plus our visual art show SNAP and the Festival’s naughty little sister, The Pumphouse.