Fifty years after Benjamin Britten’s death, autumn and winter 2026 on the Suffolk coast will mark the anniversary not by looking only backwards, but by putting new voices, young artists and community performance alongside music that still feels close to home.
Selected dates for autumn and winter 2026
- 22 August, 10am — Tickets go on general sale.
- September — Young Artist Programme open rehearsal and end-of-course concert bring new work by six composers to Britten Studio.
- 24 October — Roderick Williams stars in the world premiere of My Father Cannot Speak at Britten Studio; Maggi Hambling’s Fireworks and War Requiem open at Snape Maltings.
- 8 November — Family performance The Littlest Yak comes to Britten Studio.
- 14 November — Christ Church Cathedral Choir celebrates its 500th anniversary at Snape Maltings Concert Hall.
- 20–21 November — Errollyn Wallen’s A Christmas Miracle receives its world premiere at Orford Church.
- 4–6 December — Britten Weekend marks 50 years since the composer’s death across Snape Maltings, Aldeburgh and Aldeburgh Church.
- 8–12 December — Christmas events at Snape include the Scratch Choir, the BBC Concert Orchestra festive concert and The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse with live orchestra.
Britten Weekend, from 4 to 6 December 2026, sits at the heart of Britten Pears Arts’ autumn and winter programme. On the anniversary itself, violist Timothy Ridout and pianist James Baillieu will pair Britten’s Lachrymae with Schubert, while Guy Johnston and Melvyn Tan bring Britten’s Cello Sonata — written for Mstislav Rostropovich — to the Britten Studio that evening.
The weekend moves between the intimate and the communal. A study morning with Britten specialist Dr Lucy Walker, joined by mezzo-soprano Alice Coote and Ridout, offers a way into the composer’s life and work; Coote returns with pianist Christian Blackshaw for Schubert’s Winterreise. Then, on Saturday night, the Snape Maltings Concert Hall fills for Saint Nicolas, performed by Britten Sinfonia, BBC Singers, Britten Pears Chamber Choir and London Youth Choir’s boys’ choir under Owain Park. A remembrance service at Aldeburgh Church gives the anniversary a more reflective moment.
The following weekend, tenor Allan Clayton, countertenor Iestyn Davies, baritone Peter Brathwaite and an ensemble of musicians perform Britten’s Canticles. Written across almost 30 years for Peter Pears and other close collaborators, these compact, searching works offer another route into the creative partnership that made this stretch of coast such an important musical place.
The season’s most telling new work also begins with Britten’s unfinished idea. On 20 and 21 November 2026, Orford Church hosts the world premiere of Errollyn Wallen’s A Christmas Miracle, a new community opera inspired by Britten’s unrealised A Christmas Sequence. Wallen’s work brings his plan for an intergenerational telling of the Christmas story to the stage, with professional performers, community participation and carols for the audience to sing. It is a fitting choice of setting: Britten’s Noye’s Fludde received its premiere in the church in 1958.
A week earlier, the season looks in a different direction at Snape. Christ Church Cathedral Choir celebrates its 500th anniversary with music spanning from John Taverner to a new work by Nico Muhly. And on 24 October, baritone Roderick Williams stars in the world premiere of My Father Cannot Speak, Ben Parry and Garth Bardsley’s one-act opera about a son facing the aftermath of his father’s stroke. Sarah Connolly joins the same evening for Songs for Girls of a Certain Age.
Work in the making
There is plenty of opportunity to encounter artists before a performance reaches its final form. Open Sessions at Snape Maltings invite audiences into works being developed through Britten Pears Arts residencies, from Michelle Hromin’s composition shaped by recordings of a Croatian sea organ to Verity Monroe’s archival and sound-based response to Snape’s landscape and buildings. Other sessions include a two-performer reimagining of Bartók’s opera, and a work-in-progress that revisits the myth of Tiresias through a contemporary intersex lens.
The Friday lunchtime concerts, previously a spring fixture, continue through autumn and winter for the first time. These shorter daytime performances range from Scottish-Indian guitarist Samrat Majumder’s Bach, Dowland and new music programme to an autumnal recital by mezzo-soprano Lydia Shariff and pianist Francesca Lauri, both alumni of Britten Pears Arts programmes.
That ongoing conversation between established artists and those at the beginning of their careers is also evident in September’s Young Artist Programme open rehearsal and end-of-course concert, where six composers hear their new work brought to life by emerging performers.
Beyond the concert hall
Britten’s influence can be traced into visual art, too. Maggi Hambling’s new exhibition Fireworks opens at Gallery 21 on 24 October, drawing on memories of the 1953 Coronation fireworks over Aldeburgh beach — and on the later explosion of her Scallop sculpture, made for Britten. Nearby at Snape, her War Requiem installation responds to Britten’s great anti-war work through paintings of battlefields and war victims.
At The Red House, the exhibition Spiritual Britten continues until 1 November, exploring the beliefs, passions and sacred music that ran through the composer’s life. Heritage Open Days in September open up the histories beneath both key sites: Snape Maltings’ industrial past as Suffolk’s largest malting operation, and The Red House’s earlier life as a 1,000-acre coastal farm.
As December approaches, Snape turns towards Christmas with a Scratch Choir tackling Britten’s A Ceremony of Carols, a BBC Concert Orchestra festive broadcast concert, and the first live-orchestra presentation of Charlie Mackesy’s The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse. For younger visitors, The Littlest Yak brings puppets, songs and a Himalayan adventure to the Britten Studio in November.
Tickets go on general sale at 10am on 22 August 2026. Full listings are available from Britten Pears Arts.