The triennial festival continued to develop a reputation throughout the Victorian and Edwardian period, but was suspended during the First World War, being revived under the patronage of Norwich's first female Lord Mayor,
Ethel Colman in 1923. It saw the premieres of significant classical works including
Edward Elgar's
Sea Pictures in 1899 (sung by
Clara Butt),
E. J. Moeran's
Rhapsody No. 2 for the 1924 centenary concert (based on a Norfolk folksong),
Frank Bridge's
Enter Spring in 1927,
Ralph Vaughan Williams's
Job: A Masque for Dancing in 1930,
Arthur Bliss's
Morning Heroes also in 1930 and
Benjamin Britten's
Our Hunting Fathers in 1936. An oft-recounted story from the 1936 festival is of Vaughan Williams's intervention to stop the orchestra mocking the 22-year-old Britten's work. Vaughan Williams told them they were "in the presence of greatness" (referring to the young composer) and that if they did not want to play Britten's work they would not play his (Vaughan Williams was premiering his own
Five Tudor Portraits at the same festival). As a musical festival, it also attracted prestigious musical directors including
Sir Henry Wood,
Sir Thomas Beecham,
Sir Malcolm Sargent,
Norman Del Mar and
Vernon Handley. The festival became an annual event in 1989 following an agreement with directors of Festival Norwich (FN). FN was started in 1986 as the first annual festival of arts and music in Norfolk devoted to organising a wide range of activities embracing art, music and industry in Norfolk. The directors of the Triennial were approached with the proposal that FN would run for two consecutive years, with the Triennial continuing every third year. However, the Triennial decided that it should be an annual event itself, and it was agreed that in this case FN would cease functioning after only three years. Under the direction of Marcus Davey, now director of
The Roundhouse in London, the scope of the festival was changed from classical music to cater for a larger variety of music, theatre, dance and other visual arts. As part of the widening of the festival's scope, a new art initiative called "First Norfolk and Norwich Festival Visual Arts Week" was begun in 1994, which has now evolved into Norfolk & Norwich Open Studios, an open gallery event. ==21st century==