I chat to Ryan Wigglesworth about being Featured Artist on the 2026 Aldeburgh Competition that includes him as conductor, composer, & chamber musician

Ryan Wigglesworth (Photograph: BBC/Gordon Burniston)

At this 12 months’s Aldeburgh Competition, which runs from 12 to 18 June 2026, the competition’s Featured Artist shall be Ryan Wigglesworth and over the 17 days of the competition there shall be an opportunity to expertise the varied features of Ryan’s profession from live shows with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra (BBC SSO), of which he’s chief conductor, and the Knussen Chamber Orchestra, to a semi-staged manufacturing of Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande and chamber music with mates and colleagues, all this alongside performances of Ryan’s music and the premiere of his Viola Concerto written for violist Laurence Energy.

Ryan feedback that being Featured Artist implies that to some extent he will get the keys to the toyshop and can assist form the competition. His performances are dotted all through the competition however with scorching spots at first and finish. The alternatives of performances carry the varied elements of his life collectively, with orchestral performances, enjoying chamber music with colleagues which is a uncommon incidence, and add within the premiere of his Viola Concerto.

Aldeburgh as a spot is someplace he has been concerned with for a very long time: it means a lot to him, and he has all the time felt at dwelling there. Oliver Knussen lived there and Ryan spent a lot time with him there that the connection goes deep. Ryan provides that it’s tough to pinpoint what it’s about Aldebugh, however it’s a particular place to work and the Aldeburgh Competition returns one thing of the founding ethos with mates making music collectively on stage. Britten and Pears created the competition as a result of they needed to do what they do however at dwelling, and the competition has saved one thing of that ethos. For this reason Ryan is drawn again to the place.

Ryan Wigglesworth conducting the Knussen Chamber Orchestra on the 2025 Aldeburgh Competition (Photograph: Britten Pears Arts)

Ryan’s personal works are normally tied to the performers for whom they have been written. His Piano Concerto (2019), which he and the BBCSSO carry out at Aldeburgh this 12 months with Steven Osborne, was written for Marc-Andre Hamelin however pianist Steven Osborne has carried out it a couple of instances. What’s vital to Ryan are relationships that transcend simply the odd live performance collectively, with performers equivalent to Osborne and violist Laurence Energy for whom Ryan has written his Viola Concerto. Ryan takes pleasure in attending to know them as musicians, and that is when the concepts come, when he has a participant’s explicit sound in his head. He feedback that Energy has a novel sound and that he’s constructed to get a sound out of the viola. For Ryan, Energy has such a private strategy to all the things he that it’s a particular present to listen to his personal music performed by Energy. Additionally on the competition, Ryan and soprano Sophie Bevan are performing Ryan’s track cycle Until Dawning (from 2018, setting poetry by George Herbert). The cycle was written for Sophie Bevan and as she is Ryan’s spouse he describes this because the deepest collaboration of all.

More and more his work as a composer will not be about what he desires to put in writing however for whom. He admits that he struggles barely with the thought of being commissioned if he doesn’t know the performers he’s writing for, if he doesn’t have their sound in his head or know their character.

Each programme that he’s concerned with is given plenty of thought, in order that his items really feel proper within the context. The items that additionally characteristic within the programme will be one of many vital elements that present inspiration for a brand new work. If he is aware of that his Viola Concerto will sit alongside Brahms’s Symphony No. 2 (because it does at Aldeburgh on 27 June) then this provides him a context which means he’s not writing in an entire vacuum. And it does not matter if the piece by no means sits on this context once more. He admitted that programming his Piano Concerto alongside Ravel’s (which occurs at this 12 months’s competition) made him a bit nervous however ‘the battle’s already misplaced’.

Ryan’s Viola Concerto shall be his third concerto, coming after his Violin Concerto and Piano Concerto. The concerto type is a scenario that gives a dramatic kernel which ever means you take a look at it, pitting a person towards a gaggle, although Ryan admits that it’s tough to get away from the concerto cliches. With the Viola Concerto he needed to discover what seems like a barely new route, creating one thing fairly spacious with plenty of room for Energy to be a lyrical presence in order that the work will not be a tussle. And while Energy’s projection is extraordinary, with the viola stability stays a problem and when writing the piece Ryan had to consider textures.

Ryan Wigglesworth, Sophie Bevan & members of the Knussen Chamber Orchestra on the 2025 Aldeburgh Competition (Photograph: Britten Pears Arts)

Ryan doesn’t play as a lot chamber music as he would love and on the competition he shall be performing Birtwistle, Britten’s Cello Sonata and Shostakovich’s Seven Romances of Alexander Blok (with cellist Nicolas Altstaedt and soprano Anna-Lena Elbert). Such performances give him the chance to have real contact with sound and are essential to him. He doesn’t do extra partly due to problems with time, he’s away a good bit. Additionally, he’s protecting of his composing time, conserving his solitude, although he admits that this has change into difficult now that he and Sophie Bevan have three babies! So certainly one of issues that undergo is his means to play extra chamber music.

And nevertheless a lot you attempt to plan, it’s all guess work. It’s difficult attempting to carve out time for composing. He wants to seek out large enough chunks of time in order that he can construct in pondering time. Additionally, there must be time to get his conducting repertoire out of his bloodstream to permit his personal ideas to develop. He would like to have extra of a routine in order that he can tackle massive challenges. He quotes Sir Harrison Birtwistle on writing an opera as being like strolling by a desert; it wants funding, chipping away at it every single day. Ryan admits that he may think about having a distinct stability to life sooner or later, tipping the stability in favour of composition.

Ryan and the BBC SSO open the competition with two performances of Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande directed by Rory Kinnear with a forged together with Jacques Imbrailo (Pelléas), Sophie Bevan (Mélisande), Gordon Bintner (Golaud), Sarah Connolly (Geneviève) and John Tomlinson (Arkel). Ryan first performed the work earlier this 12 months with the BBC SSO at two performances in Scotland, but it surely has been a very long time in coming. It’s his favorite opera, and he has been longing to seek out the fitting alternative to spend the time with the work. This was it, the playing cards fell proper. Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande stays most composers’ favorite opera, although Ryan admits that it’s tough to place a finger on why. There may be the actual fact of not understanding fairly how Debussy did any of it, you possibly can’t see the joins. The work stays mysterious and elusive and the extra time spent with it the extra it wants it.

Ryan Wigglesworth on the 2025 Aldeburgh Competition (Photograph: Britten Pears Arts)

Ryan explains that Snape Maltings places such an exquisite glow or halo across the sound that it’s the good house for Pelléas et Mélisande,
as you do not need one thing that is too direct and quick. Sophie
Bevan sang Mélisande with Ryan on the Scottish performances, and he
finds involving her is marvellous as a result of when performing collectively the
two would not have to speak an excessive amount of, collaboration is especially telepathic. He
feels that it’s a fantastic function for her, it’s so mysterious. There
is a lot to consider even in Mélisande’s first phrase ‘Ne me
touchez pas’. You normally hear it executed as if she’s a terrified,
frightened fowl. However Debussy is so exact, in each notation and rhythm.
When you carry out the phrase based on Debussy’s notation, she is far
extra positive of herself, maybe understanding. It’s issues like this that
fascinate Ryan, and it’s a privilege to work on it, each web page throws
up comparable issues with dramatic nuts to crack.

Additionally as a part of this 12 months’s competition, Ryan begins a three-year tenure as Affiliate Director of the Britten Pears Younger Artist Programme [jointly with James Baillieu, see my interview]. For Ryan, the primary iteration begins in August with a Summer season Academy for chamber musicians (string quartets and pianists) and composers. Ryan intentionally needed to depart issues as open as doable. He desires issues to occur, offering house for the Younger Artists to find for themselves what they will get out of the method. The string quartets shall be engaged on Bartok’s quartets with the Kelemen Quartet who’re primarily based in Budapest and have immersed themselves in Bartok’s quartets. It appeared good to carry them to Aldeburgh and provides the Younger Artists the chance to faucet into that degree of expertise and depth. The Kelemen Quartet’s contribution will sit alongside different tutors, pianists Imogen Cooper, Steven Osborne and James Baillieu and composers Ryan himself and Julian Anderson.

He feels that this presents the chance to construct over a number of years one thing which doesn’t fairly exist within the UK, a possibility for composers and chamber musicians to collaborate and share concepts. There shall be three younger composers collaborating on this 12 months’s Summer season Academy and every will write a bit prematurely for string quartet, piano quintet or two pianists. The pianists may also be engaged on the piano ensemble repertoire which Ryan finds a stimulating type for composers. The younger composers may also develop sketches on web site, attempting issues out and growing concepts which he calls an exquisite alternative for composers.

The thought is that the Younger Artists will develop a relationship with the place that can go into the long run. He’s eager to emphasize that the venture goes again to Aldeburgh’s first rules of making a musical household. So that previously artists like Murray Perahia and Graham Johnson present in Aldeburgh a spot that they might name dwelling and the place they might develop as artists.

Ryan calls Aldeburgh one of many few locations the place artistically your wings do not feel clipped. The competition has all the time taken creative dangers, the viewers is aware of and loves this reality, and their want and love for creative danger is as sturdy as ever.

Ryan Wigglesworth

After Aldeburgh, Ryan and the BBC SSO are performing on the BBC Proms on the Royal Albert Corridor on 28 July and eight September. The July programme options music by Judith Weir, a Brett Dean premiere with soprano Claire Sales space and Elgar’s Symphony No. 1. Ryan and the orchestra had an exquisite time doing Elgar’s Symphony No. 2 on the Proms a couple of years in the past, and he feedback that it’s fantastic to have the ability to carry the First Symphony. Ryan thinks it’s wholesome for an orchestra to play this music, to work on it lots and develop a sound, they arrive to understand the complexity in bringing it alive with its shadows and hues. For his or her second Promenade they’re performing Varese, Bartok’s Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, and Rachmaninov’s Symphony No. 3. Each the Bartok and the Rachmaninov of which have been written in the identical 12 months (1936), and each are items that he adores.