The 62nd Aldeburgh Festival is the first under the artistic directorship of Pierre-Laurent Aimard. Its opening event nevertheless inhabited familiar territory: Harrison Birtwistle revisiting (yet again) the Orpheus myth. The Corridor focuses on the moment when Orpheus turns to look at Eurydice, condemning her to hell and himself to dismemberment by the Maenads.

In David Harsent’s poetic demythologisation, Eurydice steps out of character to question Orpheus’s love. Recrimination and regret afford Birtwistle ample opportunities for dramatic engagement and plaintive utterance. His word-setting is expressionistic rather than text-sensitive but Elizabeth Atherton did well to make as much audible as she did. Spoken passages had even greater clarity, Mark Padmore’s incomparably eloquent Orpheus was no less telling. Six members of the London Sinfonietta under Ryan Wigglesworth faithfully delivered an acerbically expressive instrumental commentary.

A companion piece, Semper Dowland, Semper Dolens, set the mood with Birtwistle’s elegiac recasting of seven pavanes by the Elizabethan composer. The minimal choreography allowed the dancers, comely and fluent as they were, tested one’s forbearance, as I’m afraid did the unvaried pace and mood of this 40-minute sequence.
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