Benjamin Britten is one most important British composers from the second half of the twentieth century. Remarkably, he focused on opera, a dying genre, at least in its current form. Britten's contributions however, among which Peter Grimes, The Rape of Lucretia, Gloriana, The Turn of the Screw, and Death in Venice, managed to remain core repertoire for opera companies to this day. Many of these productions included a role for his artistic partner and life companion Peter Pears. Britten also wrote a number of lieder for this tenor, among which his Serenade for tenor, horn and string orchestra. Yet, Britten excelled in many more genres. He wasn't even 20 years old when he composed his brilliant Phantasy for hobo quartet and his friendship with the legendary cellist Rostropovich led to a Cello sonata, three Suites for cello solo and a Symphony for Cello and orchestra in the 1960s.

Britten never became Master of the Queen's Music, yet he surely had feeling for public sentiments. For example, as a pacifist, he taught his people about world peace through his War Requiem from 1962. Britten was an excellent interpreter of his own work, just like Bartók and Stravinsky. Many of his recordings have been matched, but never exceeded.

Charles Villiers Stanford was born in Ireland, but rose to fame as a composer, conductor and music teacher in England. While he was still an undergraduate, he was appointed organist of Trinity College, Cambrigde. In 1882 he was one of the founders of the Royal College of Music, where he taught composition for the rest of his life. Later he also became Professor of Music at Cambridge University. Among his pupils were rising composers who would surpass him later on, such as Ralph Vaughan Williams and Gustav Holst.
Stanford composed about 200 works in almost every genre, amongst others seven symphonies, nine operas, 11 concertos, 40 choral works and 28 chamber works. Throughout his career he was always admired for his technical mastery. On the day of Stanford's death, Gustav Holst said Herbert Howells, “The one man who could get any one of us out of a technical mess is now gone from us.” After his death most of his music was quickly forgotten, with the exception of his choral works for church performance. His music became eclipsed by that of Edward Elgar and his former pupils.

Sir John Kenneth Tavener was an English composer, known for his extensive output of religious works, including The Protecting Veil, Song for Athene and The Lamb.
Tavener first came to prominence with his cantata The Whale, premiered in 1968. Then aged 24, he was described by The Guardian as "the musical discovery of the year", while The Times said he was "among the very best creative talents of his generation." During his career he became one of the best known and popular composers of his generation, most particularly for The Protecting Veil, which as recorded by cellist Steven Isserlis became a bestselling album, and Song for Athene which was sung at the funeral of Princess Diana. The Lamb featured in the soundtrack for Paolo Sorrentino's film The Great Beauty. Tavener was knighted in 2000 for his services to music and won an Ivor Novello Award.

Finzi took private lessons with Farrar from 1914-1916 and then with Bairstow from 1917-1922. He mainly underwent influences by Elgar and Vaughan Williams, loved the life in the country and developed his own, intimate style. He concentrated on songs and song cycles such as Oh fair to see, Till earth outwears, and A young man’s exhortation, preferably on texts by Hardy. Amongst his other works are a clarinet concerto from 1949 and Dies natalis for high voice and string orchestra (1939).
(Source: Musicalifeiten.nl)

JONATHAN DOVE is the most performed living opera composer in the UK. His over 30 works in this genre come in all shapes and sizes and form the backbone to his considerable oeuvre, many of which have also been performed in Europe, America and Australia. Much of his other music is palpably narrative and dramatic in conception, and covers a great range of subject matter, from contemporary to legendary, fairy-tale to sexual politics, catering to all audiences from children to adult.
Hailing from a family of architects, Dove was playing the organ in his local church at the age of twelve, and read Music at Cambridge, studying composition with Robin Holloway. Graduating from the music staff at Glyndebourne, he first gained prominence with his chamber versions of operas, including The Magic Flute, The Ring of the Nibelung, and The Cunning Little Vixen for Birmingham Opera ’s touring productions, then became music advisor at the Almeida Theatre in North London, writing a plethora of theatre scores for them, the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company. He was Artistic Director of the Spitalfields Festival from 2001-6.
Awarded a CBE in 2019 for services to music, he has also won the 2008 Ivor Novello Award, the 2006 Royal Philharmonic Society education award and four British Composer Awards. His 1998 Glyndebourne commission opera Flight has received 40 productions worldwide, and his television opera When She Died was seen by 2.5 million viewers.
He has written extensively in many genres, he is a prolific and popular choral composer, has orchestral works to his credit, several oratorios, many song cycles and much chamber music, including four string quartets.
Recent and forthcoming works include operas Marx in London (2018), Itch (2023), and forthcoming Im 80 Tagen um die Welt (Zürich, 2024) and Uprising, for Glyndebourne (2025), Northern Lights - an accordion concerto, Gaspard’s Foxtrot and Gaspard’s Christmas for narrator and orchestra, two song cycles, three string quartets and more.

Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninov was a Russian pianist, composer, and conductor of the late-Romantic period, some of whose works are among the most popular in the classical repertoire.
Born into a musical family, Rachmaninov took up the piano at age four. He graduated from the Moscow Conservatory in 1892 and had composed several piano and orchestral pieces by this time. In 1897, following the critical reaction to his Symphony No. 1, Rachmaninoff entered a four-year depression and composed little until successful therapy allowed him to complete his enthusiastically received Piano Concerto No. 2 in 1901. After the Russian Revolution, Rachmaninov and his family left Russia and resided in the United States, first in New York City. Demanding piano concert tour schedules caused his output as composer to slow tremendously; between 1918 and 1943, he completed just six compositions, including Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Symphony No. 3, and Symphonic Dances. In 1942, Rachmaninov moved to Beverly Hills, California. One month before his death from advanced melanoma, Rachmaninov acquired American citizenship.
Early influences of Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Balakirev, Mussorgsky, and other Russian composers gave way to a personal style notable for its song-like melodicism, expressiveness and his use of rich orchestral colors.[3] The piano is featured prominently in Rachmaninov's compositional output, and through his own skills as a performer he explored the expressive possibilities of the instrument.

Francis Jean Marcel Poulenc was a French composer and pianist. Poulenc's wealthy family intended him for a business career in the Rhone Poulenc family company and did not allow him to enrol at a music college. Largely self-educated musically, he studied with the pianist Ricardo Viñes, who became his mentor after the composer's parents died. Poulenc soon came under the influence of Erik Satie, under whose tutelage he became one of a group of young composers known collectively as Les Six. This group of French composers from the 1920s aimed to clear music of the impressionism of Claude Debussy, and German influences such as the Romanticism of Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss. Their motto was "L'art pour l'art": they composed music for the sake of music, without any 'meaning' or extramusical intents. In his early works Poulenc became known for his high spirits and irreverence. During the 1930s a much more serious side to his nature emerged, particularly in the religious music he composed from 1936 onwards, which he alternated with his more light-hearted works.

Anton Bruckner was an Austrian composer known for his symphonies, masses, and motets. The first are considered emblematic of the final stage of Austro-German Romanticism because of their rich harmonic language, strongly polyphonic character, and considerable length. Bruckner's compositions helped to define contemporary musical radicalism, owing to their dissonances, unprepared modulations, and roving harmonies. Bruckner was greatly admired by subsequent composers including his friend Gustav Mahler, who described him as "half simpleton, half God".

Coming from a small farmer's village, Bruckner started his music education early, which he continued for a long time. Due to a mix of insecurity and eagerness to learn, Bruckner rushed from one study into another and he showed himself as a fanatic, but also remarkably talented, student. He started composing at an early age, but he considered everything before his 39th as mere practice. Bruckner never became a stable composer and relied on in short phases of creative energy. After these phases, he would spend ages revising his work. In particular his symphonies received countless revisions and new editions, which was also due to his insecurity, he was quite sensitive to criticism.

The premier of his Third Symphony was a disaster: a large part of the audience left the concert hall and a devastating review appeared afterwards. Luckily, appreciation for his work grew and at the time of his death, even the great Brahms attended his funeral.