Benjamin Britten Britten was a celebrated pianist and conductor, performing many of his own works in concert and on record. He also performed and recorded works by others, such as Bach's "Brandenburg concertos", Mozart symphonies, and song cycles by Schubert and Schumann. Together with Pears and the librettist and producer Eric Crozier, Britten founded the annual Aldeburgh Festival in 1948, and he was responsible for the creation of Snape Maltings concert hall in 1967. In his last year, he was the first composer to be given a life peerage. Britten was born in the fishing port of Lowestoft in Suffolk, on the
William Blezard March of Delhi", a melodramatic Victorian song involving colonels, marauders and bugles. Grenfell supported the Blezard family in many ways: she bought them a dishwasher one Christmas; wrote birthday songs for their children, and contributed (unwittingly) to his son's first motorbike. Every summer, Joyce and Reggie Grenfell treated William and Joan to a week at the Aldeburgh Music Festival. For the royal opening of Snape Maltings concert hall in 1967, Blezard and Grenfell composed a surprise song for Benjamin Britten who was so overwhelmed that he burst into tears. In 1957, he worked on two Royal Shakespeare Company productions with