Following his conducting of the US premiere of Peter Grimes at Tanglewood in 1946 ... Bernstein and Britten were rarely in touch. As Bernstein's biographer Humphrey Burton notes, 'perhaps Britten did not warm to his flamboyant interpreter' (Leonard Bernstein, p. 153).

Prompted by Burton's description, Donald Mitchell remembers Britten telling him that, on one occasion, travelling together by cab down Fifth Avenue he became so exasperated by a show of Bernstein's undeniably flamboyant personality -- he could not remember what it was that so irritated him -- that he punched him in the chest in an effort to shut him up.

It was the only time, Britten claimed, 'that I have ever punched anybody.'

-- "Letters from a Life: Selected Letters of Benjamin Britten, Volume Three 1946-51," ed. Donald Mitchell et al.

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