Heritage Open Days: The Red House
A nationwide celebration of living heritage at The Red House and Archive. This year’s Heritage Open Days theme is “creativity unwrapped” – fitting for the creative inspiration that surrounded Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears at The Red House.
The Archive will host a display about the collaborative efforts of creating an opera, while the house, composition studio, library and garden will be open to explore its unique heritage and its famous owners. A new film installation about Britten & composition has been installed in the Archive foyer.
Admission is free.
We recommend you allocate 1-2hrs to go around the site and we have introduced time slots to make the most out of your visit. Please note that mornings can be busy.
Film Installation | Britten, Reflections on Composition
Directed and Filmed by Emily Richardson, 2023
4.13 minutes
Britten’s creative inspiration came from where he lived and worked. How did composing while walking in this particular Suffolk landscape shape the music he was writing?
The ever changing nature of the sea, the way light reflects on water giving seemingly endless different colour combinations, constant movement in the reedbeds combined with the rhythm of walking and birdsong give rise to a musical perception of landscape.
Britten, Reflections on Composition is a film by Emily Richardson made with materials from the Britten Pears Archive that considers this artistic process and the profound influences of Britten’s local surroundings on his work.
The film will be playing on a loop in the Archive foyer as a part of Heritage Open Days.
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