IT was a performance of The Sea at the 1924 Norwich Triennial Festival that first earned Bridge the admiration of the young Benjamin Britten. The impression made by that early work was reinforced by the experience, three years later, of Enter Spring. Bridge conducted the premiere, staying with his old friend Audrey Alston (née ffolkes), a Royal College of Music contemporary and Britten's viola teacher. It was Alston who encouraged Bridge to meet the thirteen-year-old and consider taking him on as a pupil; Bridge's initial reluctance was mollified by a preliminary meeting and examination of Britten's compositions, and lessons began in early 1928. These were held during the school holidays, and Bridge's standards were exacting from the outset, as Britten recalled in 1963:

This indicates Bridge's high regard for his pupil's talents and abilities, and the complete seriousness with which he treated his role in developing them. His inability to take a gentler approach also recalls his own upbringing and musical training. Within a year of having first made contact with Bridge, Britten completed the astounding Quatre Chansons Françaises, which demonstrate his advanced stylistic proclivities and technical refinement even at this early stage.

It is clear that the lessons did not follow the sort of conventional technical model that one might expect. Certainly, Bridge encouraged Britten to work on aspects of his technique, but he did not simply set compositional exercises; Britten did not, for instance, study strict counterpoint with Bridge, and it is interesting to note that, despite his technical facility, he found Palestrinian counterpoint challenging when studying with John Ireland. Rather, both approached the sessions as composers, and technical refinement was expected as a matter of course.