Archive reading room exhibitions
Visitors to the Aldeburgh Festival can see two exhibitions in the Archive reading room at the Red House. On display will be a fascinating selection of material from our strong rooms. These exhibitions replace our Stories from the Archives talks during the Festival.
Pears on the building site for the new Britten-Pears School for Advanced Musical Studies, 1977
The Learning Legacy of Britten and Pears
3-14 June
Our first exhibition celebrates two initiatives started by Britten and Pears in the early 1970s to provide opportunities for learning at Snape Maltings and in Aldeburgh. On display are items illustrating the history the Britten-Pears Young Artist Programme from the first master classes of 50 years ago to the present day. In 1973 The Britten–Pears Library Trust was established to make valuable resources available to scholars, musicians and visitors – work which continues in our Archive today.
Detail of the cloth which Kathleen Ferrier and Nancy Evans used as a prop for performances of The Rape of Lucretia
Women in the Britten and Pears Creative Circle
15-26 June
This reading room exhibition focuses on six women who are strongly represented in our archive collections. A diverse selection of material illustrates the variety of their work – a teacher and composer, director, librettist, singers, and music assistant – as well as their close, and long friendships with Britten and Pears.
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![Pages from Holst’s 1940 scrapbook about air raids and the internment of Rauter and Müller-Hartmann.]()
Archive Treasures: Imogen Holst’s World War II scrapbooks and her émigré musician friends
For this month’s archive treasures story we are going to delve again into Imogen Holst’s wonderful scrapbooks. Holst kept a series of large scrapbooks…![Peter Pears, Colin Matthews, Imogen Holst and Donald Mitchell with the Amadeus String Quartet during rehearsals for the premiere of Britten’s String Quartet No. 3, Snape Maltings, December 1976]()
Archive Treasures: Voices in December
The Christmas season was always celebrated with gusto at The Red House. Correspondence and cards found in the Archive collections underline the cheer…![Choir boys in their costumes for The Golden Vanity playing in Blythburgh churchyard, 1969]()
Archive Treasures: ‘my favourite choir at my favourite school’
Our archive has recently established a link with former members of the Wandsworth School Boys’ Choir – a choir with whom Britten and Pears worked on…
