Bream's collaborations with tenor Peter Pears also resulted in song cycles by Britten, Lennox Berkeley and others.

Britten was also responsible, together with Pears and the librettist / producer Eric Crozier, for the founding of the Aldeburgh Festival, and the creation of Snape Maltings Concert Hall.

Of more lasting importance to Britten was his meeting in 1937 with the tenor Peter Pears, who was to become his musical collaborator and inspiration as well as his life partner.

In April 1939 Britten and Pears followed Auden to America.

There, in 1940, Britten composed Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo, the first of many song cycles for Pears ( Britten composed his first individual work for Pears in 1937, as part of The Company of Heaven for the BBC ).

Britten and Pears returned to England in April 1942.

Both Britten and Pears applied for recognition as conscientious objectors ; Britten was initially allowed only non-combatant service in the military, but gained unconditional exemption on appeal.

Following the financial loss of the tour, it was decided that Glyndebourne would not send out any more tours, and in response, Britten along with Peter Pears, his librettist Eric Crozier and designer John Piper set up The English Opera Group with the express role of presenting new opera on tour.

Britten wrote Albert Herring for the English Opera Group in 1947, and it was while on tour that Pears came up with the idea of mounting a Festival in the small Suffolk seaside town of Aldeburgh, six miles from Snape, where Britten had now moved to a house on Crag Path.

An increasingly important influence was the music of the East, an interest that was fostered by a tour with Pears in 1957, when Britten was struck by the music of the Balinese gamelan and by Japanese Noh plays.

From the very start of the Aldeburgh Festival in 1948, Britten appeared as a performer and conductor, frequently accompanying Pears.

The Red House in Aldeburgh, where Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears lived and worked together from 1957 until Britten ’ s death in 1976, is now the home of the Britten-Pears Foundation, established to promote their musical legacy.

Burney and Halliday, who died in the war, were friends of Peter Pears and Britten, respectively.

The first recording, featuring Vishnevskaya, Fischer-Dieskau and Pears, with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Britten, was produced in 1963.

* BBC Legends: Stefania Woytowicz, Peter Pears, Hans Wilbrink ; New Philharmonia Chorus ; Wandsworth School Boys ' Choir ; New Philharmonia Orchestra, Melos Ensemble ; Carlo Maria Giulini, Benjamin Britten, conductors

* Britten – Pears Foundation website, including video introduction to the War Requiem

Pears and Britten gave their first recital together in 1937 at Balliol College, Oxford University.

In April 1939, Britten and Pears left for America together as pacifists, a few months before the outbreak of war between the British Empire and Germany.

There, in 1940, Britten composed Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo, the first of many song cycles for Pears.

In 2007 Dave Walker recorded and released Walking Underwater, a CD featuring new material by Dave Walker, Bob Britten, and William O ’ Keeffe.

Britten was also renowned as a piano accompanist and together they recorded, among other works, Schubert's Sonata for Arpeggione and Piano in A minor D. 821.

In 1820, Spiritualist Emma Hardinge Britten recorded a description of mine kobolds from a Madame Kalodzy, who stayed with peasants named Dorothea and Michael Engelbrecht:

Benjamin Britten coached them in his own first and second string quartets ( they have recorded all three of his works in the genre ), and entrusted the first British performances of Dmitri Shostakovich's ninth and tenth quartets ( whose scores he had acquired from the composer ) to them.

His works have been recorded on more than 200 CDs, five of which have received Grammy Award nominations, including O Magnum Mysterium by the Tiffany Consort, A Company of Voices by Conspirare, Sound The Bells by The Bay Brass and two all-Lauridsen discs entitled Lux Aeterna by the Los Angeles Master Chorale led by Paul Salamunovich and Polyphony with the Britten Sinfonia conducted by Stephen Layton.

They have recorded a disc of Britten ’ s song cycles together, which was greeted enthusiastically by British and international critics alike.

( 2003, recorded on 30 July 2003 in the Royal Albert Hall, London, as part of the BBC Proms ), CD title is not that clear but the CD includes Walton Coronation Te Deum, Elgar Sea Pictures, Bax November Woods, Britten The Young Person ’ s Guide to the Orchestra Warner Classics 2564 61550-2

Golem was extremely successful, winning the first Britten Prize for Composition in 1990, as well as being recorded by Virgin Classics.

Other works include Paseo for guitar ( 1969 ), Sinfonia in Memoriam Benjamin Britten ( 1977 ), two violin concertos ( 1950, 1954 ), choral and chamber works ( including the 1956 Cello and Piano Sonata, recorded twenty years later for L ' Oiseau Lyre by Julian Lloyd Webber and John McCabe ) and works for piano and organ.

In the English canon, he also recorded songs by Edward Elgar, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Arthur Butterworth and of course Benjamin Britten.

There she was responsible for the musical direction of numerous productions, notably Pelléas et Mélisande, Il Barbiere di Siviglia, La Cenerentola, Die Entführung aus dem Serail, La Finta Giardiniera, Roméo et Juliette by Berlioz, Orfeo by Monteverdi, Les Brigands by Offenbach, L ' Heure espagnole and L ' Enfant et les Sortilèges by Ravel, Haydn's Il Mondo della luna, Gluck's Iphigénie en Tauride, The Rape of Lucretia by Britten and Le Chapeau de paille d ' Italie by Nina Rota, whilst La Station Thermale ( recorded by Ricordi ) and Les Oiseaux de Passage by Fabio Vacchi and Dédale by Hugues Dufourt ( recorded on CD by MFA / Radio France ) are among her world creations.

* In 1951, British composer Benjamin Britten wrote a piece for solo oboe incorporating six of Ovid's mythical characters.

The Fanfare for St Edmundsbury is a piece of music written by the British composer Benjamin Britten for a " Pageant of Magna Carta " in the grounds of St Edmundsbury Cathedral, Bury St Edmunds in 1959.

Writing specifically for the resources available to him on this occasion, Britten scored the piece for mixed choir, tenor soloist, three or four boys, strings, piano duet, organ and percussion.

* Six Metamorphoses after Ovid, piece for solo oboe by Benjamin Britten

The piece is based on eight themes which Britten wrote during his childhood ( two per movement ) and for which he had a particular fondness.

In the 20th century, English opera began to assert more independence, with works of Ralph Vaughan Williams and in particular Benjamin Britten, who in a series of works that remain in standard repertory today, revealed an excellent flair for the dramatic and superb musicality.

Britten also used his time in London to attend concerts and become better acquainted with the music of Igor Stravinsky, Gustav Mahler, and Dmitri Shostakovich.

Although ultimately dissuaded by his parents ( at the suggestion of College staff ), Britten had also intended postgraduate study with Alban Berg in Vienna.

Already friends with the composer Aaron Copland, Britten encountered his latest works Billy the Kid and An Outdoor Overture, both of which manifestly influenced his own music.

In the meantime, Britten had had his first encounter with Balinese gamelan music through the transcriptions for two pianos made by the Canadian composer Colin McPhee.

Britten completed the choral works Hymn to St. Cecilia ( his last large-scale collaboration with Auden ) and A Ceremony of Carols during the long sea voyage.

Back in 1937, with the inheritance following the death of his mother, Britten had bought The Old Mill in Snape, Suffolk, which became his Suffolk home, and this is where he spent much of his time in 1944 working on Peter Grimes.

The Aldeburgh Festival was duly launched in June 1948, with Albert Herring playing at the Jubilee Hall and Britten ’ s new cantata for tenor, chorus and orchestra, Saint Nicolas, in the Parish Church.

Britten developed close friendships with Russian musicians Dmitri Shostakovich and Mstislav Rostropovich in the 1960s.

* Billy Budd ( 1951 ) ( with Eric Crozier ; based on Melville's novel, for the opera by Benjamin Britten )

His career was closely associated with the composer Edward Benjamin Britten.

During his life he was considered a notable interpreter of Franz Schubert's Lieder, usually with Britten as accompanist.

Britten wrote this role with Deller specifically in mind, although he was dropped from staged revivals of the work against the composer's wishes, probably because of poor acting technique.

By 1982, Britten – Pears archivist Rosamund Strode calculated that the Festival had to that date presented new works by over 75 composers, with world premieres of 15 operas.

Later, young composers continued to be encouraged with the foundation of the biennial Benjamin Britten Composers ’ Competition.

The Royal Opera presented A Midsummer Night ’ s Dream in the first season, and on 16 June 1973, the first performance of Britten ’ s final opera, Death in Venice, was given at the Concert Hall, with Pears in the role of Aschenbach.