Friday June 4 2021
In our archive is a wonderful photograph album that Britten put together from 1935 to 1936, pasting in photographs and writing captions. It is fascinating looking through this album. I feel as if I am travelling back to a different era as I peer into the small black and white photographs. There are some great […]
Friday May 21 2021
Books tell us about their readers: who can resist peering at someone’s bookshelves? Every book collection is a map of the owner’s interests – and for the owner not merely a map but a timeline, since he or she may well be able to remember when and where the book was acquired and read, and […]
Friday May 7 2021
A set of woodblock prints in Britten and Pears’ Library has a fascinating connection with the first Church Parable The opera Curlew River was the first of Britten’s three Parables for Church Performance. It is based partly on the idea of the medieval Miracle Play – in which a story (usually a biblical tale about […]
Saturday April 3 2021
We mark Easter 2021 with items from the collections that share themes of spring, renewal and even the enjoyment of chocolate. In the 1920s Imogen Holst commemorates Easter through dance while Britten considers musical pictures of cuckoos and rabbits. Forty years later, Easter is celebrated with eggs at The Red House and annual concerts at the Maltings, Snape. Lastly, we see how Britten, Pears and Holst’s devotion […]
Friday March 26 2021
What links the composer of the evocative TV theme for Brideshead Revisited to The Red House? The composer Geoffrey Burgon may be best known for his work in television and cinema. Among his credits are the scores for Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979) and, by contrast, the haunting theme for the 1985 film Turtle […]
Friday March 12 2021
In July 1942 Imogen Holst received a wonderful letter from a group of friends proposing to organise a concert of her works in London as a thank you gift. Holst was at this time recovering from overwork and exhaustion and this thoughtful gesture would no doubt have raised her spirits. In January 1940 Holst had begun work as a ‘Music Traveller’. She was one of six musicians and educators, mostly women, selected to travel […]
Friday February 26 2021
The former homes of famous people are referred to, variously, as ‘house museums’ or ‘personality houses’. They are effectively physical ‘biographies’, telling the stories of the well-known former occupant(s) and presenting the physical traces of their habitation to the visiting public. In the case of The Red House in Aldeburgh, Britten and Pears’ final home, […]
Friday February 12 2021
Close inspection of the bookshelves in The Red House reveals a number of volumes that must have had special resonance for Britten and Pears. These titles come under the category of ‘gay literature,’ though they were part of The Red House library well before that term gained common usage. What is interesting is that, whether […]
Thursday February 4 2021
The archive at The Red House spans all aspects of Britten and Pears’ lives together – from their professional activities, the compositions and performances that made them world famous, to the everyday details of their household here. Every scrap of paper tells a story – and they kept virtually everything. The story of their long relationship, the […]
Thursday January 21 2021
Rostropovich, Menuhin, Richter – asked to compile a list of musicians who worked with Britten and Pears, there are some obvious names. Likewise, asked to name Western musicians who explored Indian culture in the 1960s, most people would come up with names from the world of rock music. Less well known is the way that […]
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16 June 2021