English Chamber Orchestra and Arnold Goldsbrough. The group took its current name in 1960, when it expanded its repertoire beyond the Baroque period for the first time. Its repertoire remained limited by the group's size, which has stayed fairly consistently at around the size of an orchestra of Mozart's time. Shortly afterwards, it became closely associated with the Aldeburgh Festival, playing in the premieres of Benjamin Britten's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" (1960), "Owen Wingrave" (1970), "Curlew River" and several other of his works. The occasions on which Britten conducted the orchestra included the opening concerts of the Queen Elizabeth Hall and Snape Maltings
Aldeburgh Festival Peter and Saint Paul. It featured a performance of "Albert Herring" by the English Opera Group; Britten's newly written Saint Nicolas; and performances by Clifford Curzon and the Zorian String Quartet. Over the years the festival grew and took in additional venues in nearby Orford, Blythburgh and Framlingham. However, the lack of a large venue was holding back the further development of the Festival until one of the largest mid-nineteenth-century maltings in East Anglia, at Snape, a village just outside Aldeburgh, became available. Britten, who had lived in Snape in the 1930s, had the vision that the largest of the