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Suffolk Sounds

24/08/2012

BBC Radio 3 - Twenty Minutes, Suffolk Sounds

Simon Barnes on the sounds of the Suffolk coast, which inspired Britten's Peter Grimes.

Journalist, nature writer and Britten devotee Simon Barnes celebrates the sounds of the Suffolk coast, which inspired Britten's opera Peter Grimes.

Award-winning journalist, nature-writer and Britten devotee, Simon Barnes, writes in praise of the glorious sounds of his beloved Suffolk coast which inspired Britten's opera 'Peter Grimes'.

First staged a month after VE Day, 'Peter Grimes', Britten's searing psychological drama set in a claustrophobic Suffolk fishing community was a critical and popular success which established a new kind of English operatic tradition. It was based loosely on Britten's own hometown, Aldeburgh, on the East Coast of England. It's a coast Simon Barnes knows well, with its shifting shingle beaches, sandling heaths and wide-open skies, echoing with the sounds of redshank and curlew. Here Barnes writes in praise of the landscape he's inhabited for the past few decades - a wild, rich, noisy coast, ever-changing and volatile - which can be heard throughout Britten's music.

Writer: Simon Barnes is the multi-award-winning chief sportswriter at The Times. He also writes a Saturday column on wildlife. His 18 books include three novels and the best-selling How To Be A Bad Birdwatcher. He lives in East Anglia with his family and five horses 

Producer: Justine Willett.

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