Snape Maltings possible site. Negotiations began with George Gooderham and after little more than a year Snape Maltings Concert Hall was ready to be opened by the Queen at the start of the 1967 Aldeburgh Festival. The composer Benjamin Britten was inspired by the vast skies and moody seas of the Suffolk coast, and in 1948, along with singer Peter Pears and writer Eric Crozier, he founded the Aldeburgh Festival. Britten and Pears made a point of educating and supporting young artists. They brought together international stars and emerging talent, including world-renowned figures such as Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Yehudi Menuhin, Sviatoslav Richter and
John Culshaw commissioned Britten's opera "Owen Wingrave," written expressly for television. He also persuaded Britten to conduct television productions of "Peter Grimes" and Mozart's "Idomeneo", and to accompany Pears in Schubert's "Winterreise". Britten and Pears invited him to Snape, not far from their base at Aldeburgh in Suffolk and he encouraged them to transform the Snape Maltings into a concert-hall. He later initiated the Benson and Hedges music festival at Snape and was planning the fourth season at the time of his death. Some of his BBC programmes have been preserved on DVD, including films of the Amadeus Quartet playing works by