London’s South Bank has offered work to a pair of talented English composers that will keep them away from composing, writes Norman Lebrecht. “In the prime of life and apparent good health, the pair ought to be at the height of their fertility yet such is the English aptitude for seducing artists away from art – and the concomitant avidness of English artists to accept state honours and financial honoraria – that no-one, not even their loyal publisher, would aver that Oliver Knussen or George Benjamin has come within a nautical mile of fulfilling a truly remarkable potential.”