Page 326 - Media Coverage Book - 75th Aldeburgh Festival 2024

The tranquil location, by the reed beds next to the River Alde, belies its exposure to
imminent environmental change. “It’s such a delicate ecology,” Wright said. “If the
river overtops, the concert hall will be 10 feet underwater. We’re on borrowed time.”

A few miles up the road lies the Red House, the home of Britten and Pears for many
years, which has been lovingly preserved, with their considerable art collection
exhibited on rotation. It feels like an extremely comfortable place, demonstrating the
kind of bourgeois “nest of love” that W.H. Auden chided Britten about earlier in his
career.

Britten and Pears often welcomed other artists with similar mind-sets into their
home. “I have to write for people or for occasions,” Britten told CBS in 1968, and the
couple’s benevolence to other artists also took the shape of a house to live in, or a
quiet place to work.

In the case of the artist Philip Sutton, Britten and Pears “gave him a home to live in
for a couple of months, which ended up being a couple of years,” said Ella Roberts,
the head of the Red House. “It’s the postwar thing of starting again, of establishing a
creative landscape, that they were really invested in.” Today, artists seeking a
creative retreat can stay in a house built for the artist Mary Potter on the grounds of
the Red House, and, in a cute corner of town, another built for Imogen Holst, the
composer, Britten assistant and longtime festival administrator.

Britten once explained what he called “this holy triangle”: composer, performer and
listener. It’s not a universally loved idea. But when bound by trust, and buoyed by