The Financial Times:
Sound recordist Chris Watson tunes into the Suffolk soundscape that inspired the composer
A walk with the FT: In Britten’s footsteps
One moment we are listening to widgeon ducks whistling from the wetlands to our right. The next we are stopped in our tracks by a wren sounding the alarm at our approach. The sound recordist Chris Watson and I are a couple of miles north of the Suffolk seaside town of Aldeburgh, and already the quietness of our rural surroundings has revealed all sorts of sounds. “Silence is oppressive but quietness isn’t,” says Watson. “Silence doesn’t exist in the natural world.” Next Friday, Watson’sIn Britten’s Footsteps premieres as part of Aldeburgh Music’s year-long Britten Centenary celebrations. The piece is a season-by-season introduction to the habitats familiar to Benjamin Britten, reprising the sounds that surrounded him on his “composing walks”, and serving as an aural route-map today. [Andrew Clark]
