In the months before the 1975 Aldeburgh Festival, Steuart conducted Donizetti's Torquato Tasso in London, and A Midsummer Night's Dream in Copenhagen (in Danish, with a baritone singing Oberon). The Aldeburgh Festival saw a revival of Death in Venice and the premiere of the Suite on English Folk Tunes.

WHILE WE WERE MEETING to prepare for the BBC recording of Paul Bunyan in the spring of 1975, Ben first showed me his new Suite on English Folk Tunes, which he wanted me to conduct at the next Aldeburgh Festival.

The opening number, ‘Cakes and Ale’, is extremely tricky, and at the first rehearsal Ben suddenly decided that he wanted a brief ‘Luftpause’ after each of the first three string solos (violin, viola and cello), an idea that we all found very hard to assimilate and that has caused problems ever since. The first performance was at a special gala concert for Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mother, on Friday, 13 June. A second performance followed on 19 June in an entirely different programme, when Theodor Uppman sang ‘Billy in the Darbies’ from Billy Budd, the role he had created at Covent Garden in 1951. At the end of this aria there was originally a bottom F for the two horns, which in the 1961 revision had been transferred to the double-bass. The horns were very anxious to play the bottom F, but Ben was quite firm, saying that though it might be feasible, he did not think it would produce the sort of sound that he wanted. Unfortunately, we could not put this to the test, as Ben was not able to come to a rehearsal to hear them try it.

The English Opera Group, having revived Death in Venice for the 1975 Aldeburgh Festival and subsequently again at Covent Garden, had only one further production to offer before re-emerging as the English Music Theatre. This was a revival of Curlew River at the end of August 1975, the last time Ben was to see a Church Parable and the last time Peter was to sing the Madwoman.

Things seemed to be coming to an end; but Ben had just completed a new work, the cantata Phaedra, written for Janet Baker, and wanted me to see the score.