Simon Rattle conducted the Philharmonia Orchestra in the first performance of this 35 minute orchestral work.

". . . a score almost every page of which glows with an ingenious and felt musicality, and in which, all too unusually these days, its basic idea - a finely wrought melody for bassoon - is also its most personal and memorable invention."

Bayan Northcott, Sunday Telegraph, 16 May 1982