Steuart Bedford

Steuart John Rudolf Bedford OBE was an English orchestral and opera conductor and pianist. He was the brother of composer David Bedford and of singer Peter Lehmann Bedford and a grandson of Liza Lehmann and Herbert Bedford; his parents were Leslie Bedford, an inventor, and Lesley Duff, a soprano opera singer. Bedford was particularly associated with the music of Benjamin Britten, and conducted the world premiere of Death in Venice in 1973. Bedford also conducted Britten's other operas, and made an orchestral suite of music from Death in Venice. Between 1974 and 1998, he was one of the artistic directors of the Aldeburgh Festival. In 1989, he became joint artistic director with Oliver Knussen. In the summer of 2013, Bedford conducted a performance of Peter Grimes which was staged in its natural setting on the beach at Aldeburgh. His book Knowing Britten, compiled through his conversations with the tenor Christopher Gillett, was published in June 2021 by the Britten Press. His other work in contemporary opera included conducting the 1996 world premiere in Monte Carlo of Lowell Liebermann's The Picture of Dorian Gray, and also the 1999 US premiere. From Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steuart...) under Creative Commons Attribution CC-BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b...)