Tim Albery is standing on the shingle of Aldeburgh beach, bracing himself against the stiff north-easterly wind sweeping in from the sea. "It's like some terrible theatre exercise," says the director, scarf and cap pulled on tight. "'Class, try and feel what it would really be like to be in Peter Grimes.'" Albery is talking about the production of Benjamin Britten's opera that he's staging on this very shoreline: the ambitious (and potentially foolhardy) highlight of the Aldeburgh festival's celebration of the centenary of their founder's birth.

"You cannot stand in front of this case and not feel your heart beat faster – it is astonishing," said Jon Whiteley, starry-eyed in front of a magnificent 298-year-old violin called the Alard on display for the first time. Nearby are some evocatively named relatives: the Viotti, the Batta-Piatigorsky, the Boissier-Sarasate, the Lady Blunt and, the most famous of them all, the Messiah – some of the finest stringed instruments ever created.

They are worth a terrifying sum, possibly in the hundreds of millions. The Lady Blunt has twice set a world-record price at auction, last selling for £9.8m in June 2011.