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'Nature was etched in Britten's music': the birdwatching composer

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Mixing Britten’s folksongs with poetry and soundscapes, soprano Marci Meth took inspiration from the composer himself to create an album inspired by and embedded in the countryside that he loved

There’s no place like home, and no one knew that better than Benjamin Britten. He began composing folksong arrangements in 1941, when he was homesick in the US. Those songs brought him back to Suffolk – to the people and landscape he loved. Accepting the inaugural Aspen award in 1964, Britten said: “I belong at home – there – in Aldeburgh … and all the music I write comes from it.”

I had been studying Britten’s folksong arrangements for a year when I read that. I knew intuitively that his songs were rooted in the land, and I decided I needed to go to Aldeburgh to hear the music of that place for myself.

Yehudi Menuhin once said, 'if wind and water could write music, it would sound like Ben’s'

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