The Aldeburgh Festival has been a pilgrimage for lovers of classical music and culture since 1948. It brings together new commissions, world-premieres and international stars on the stretch of Suffolk Coast which so bewitched its founder, the composer Benjamin Britten. It runs for a fortnight each June.

Twice a week in the run up to Festival, this podcast gets up close with some of the artists taking part, in a mix of quick fire questions and in-depth discussions, hosted by BBC Radio 3’s Tom McKinney and Dr Lucy Walker. If you want to know more about the Aldeburgh Festival, this podcast is a great place to start.

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The Ligeti Quartet has curated Ligeti Day in this year’s Aldeburgh Festival to mark the centenary of the great composer’s birth. Highlights include a concert including 15 world premieres by composers including Ligeti’s son Lukas. In this specially created bonus edition of the Aldeburgh Festival podcast, the quartet members explore these new works and the music of Ligeti himself in advance of Ligeti Day on Friday 23 June.

In the final episode of the 2023 Aldeburgh Festival podcast, our guests offer their advice to a young person starting out in their career, and we hear about some of their hopes and dreams for the future.

Presented by Tom McKinney
Edited by Matt Jolly
Original theme music by Aldeburgh Young Musician, Laila Arafah

In episode six the stars of the 2023 Aldeburgh Festival discuss the living legacy of two of its founders, Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears. How has their music, their relationship, and their determination to make music useful for the community informed their own musical lives? And why were they so affected by this quiet stretch of Suffolk coast?

Presented by BBC Radio 3’s Tom McKinney
Edited by Matt Jolly
Original theme music by Aldeburgh Young Musician, Laila Arafa

In this episode you’ll hear directly from the stars themselves about what to expect from their Aldeburgh Festival performances. We’ll also get a window into how they are preparing. For some, the journey to the 2023 Festival began several years ago…

Presented by BBC Radio 3’s Tom McKinney
Edited by Matt Jolly
Original theme music by Aldeburgh Young Musician, Laila Arafah

Over the next few weeks we are counting down to the 2023 Aldeburgh Festival with the help of some of its star performers, artists, composers and conductors. In this episode we ask our guests about the importance of their surroundings – the sights and sounds of their creative spaces, the bleak beauty of Aldeburgh, and a thread through this year’s Festival: the enormity of the cosmos.

Presented by BBC Radio 3’s Tom McKinney
Edited by Matt Jolly
Original theme music by Aldeburgh Young Musician, Laila Arafah

Over the next few weeks we are counting down to the 2023 Aldeburgh Festival with the help of some of its star performers, artists, composers and conductors. What are they looking forward to, how are they preparing, and what does the Aldeburgh Festival mean to them?

Presented by BBC Radio 3’s Tom McKinney
Edited by Matt Jolly
Original theme music by Aldeburgh Young Musician, Laila Arafah

Aldeburgh Festival Featured Musician Cassandra Miller is one of the busiest composers working today, and her approach to creativity is highly individual. Her work is often meditative, mesmeric even, and as she describes in this podcast, her intention is to create a "slow, entrancing world". She often bases her work on musical source – a recording, or a particular score – that has caught her attention and these influences range in style and form: from operatic singing, to Georgian folksongs, to Kurt Cobain. In this podcast, we explore this approach – known as "transcription" – as well as her fascinating career, and her many collaborations with extraordinary performing artists.

Presented by Dr Lucy Walker.

We’re very grateful to the Bozzini Quartet, Juliet Fraser, Another Timbre label and Faber Music for allowing us permission to use the musical excerpts here.

Aldeburgh Festival Featured Musician Anna Thorvaldsdottir is one of the most extraordinary composers working today. She was born near Reykjavik in Iceland, and her orchestral pieces often evoke and explore the massive and dramatic landscapes of her home country. In this conversation, Anna talks about her love of orchestral sound – her ‘sonic landscapes’ – and her fruitful collaborations with contemporary ensembles. During the podcast we hear clips from her brilliant orchestral work Catamorphosis (Iceland Symphony, conducted by Daniel Bjarnason, forthcoming on Sono Luminus) and a chamber piece, originally performed with a light installation, In the Light of Air (International Contemporary Ensemble, Sono Luminus).

Presented by Dr Lucy Walker.

With grateful thanks to Wise Classical and Sono Luminus for their permission to use these extracts.