It turns out that Britten had a hand in stirring her passion for composing. "When I was eight I went to see Peter Grimes at Sadlers Wells, where my mother was playing in the orchestra. I got lost backstage afterwards and blundered into this big scary figure... It was Peter Pears, who was playing Grimes. Anyway, I absolutely loved the storm music and was determined to do something just like it and, as soon as I got home, I got my music paper out and scribbled something." Years later, she saw the great man himself, when she was playing in the training orchestra Britten had set up as part of the Aldeburgh Festival. "I saw him there looking very frail in his wheel-chair," she says. "It was only a year or two before he died. I never plucked up the courage to talk to him."