Benjamin Britten the apex of his reputation: it was almost universally hailed as a masterpiece." Shostakovich told Rostropovich that he believed it to be "the greatest work of the twentieth century". In 1967 the BBC commissioned Britten to write an opera specially for television. "Owen Wingrave" was based, like "The Turn of the Screw", on a ghost story by Henry James. By the 1960s Britten found composition much slower than in his prolific youth; he told the 28-year-old composer Nicholas Maw, "Get as much done now as you can, because it gets much, much more difficult as you grow older." He did
Henry Forbes (composer) George Forbes (1813–1883) in concerts, and was between 1827 and 1850 conductor of the Società Armonica. He died on 24 November 1859, in his fifty-sixth year. Henry Forbes (composer) Henry Forbes (1804–1859) was an English pianist, organist and composer. Forbes was a pupil of George Thomas Smart, Johann Nepomuk Hummel, Ignaz Moscheles, and Henri Herz, and had greater success as executant and teacher than as composer. While organist of St Luke's Church, Chelsea, a London church, he published (1843) "National Psalmody", containing some original numbers. His opera "The Fairy Oak" was disliked by the critics, but had a run of