Commissioned by the St Magnus Festival with funds from the Scottish Arts Council. First performed by The Fires of London in June 1978 in St Magnus Cathedral Kirkwall.The work takes as its starting-point a sequence of dreams related by Franz Kafka in his diaries of 1910. Eduardova was a Russian ballerina whom Kafka had seen dancing in Prague in the early part of this century. The music of The Dancer Eduardova is based on dancing particularly the csardas which in his dream Kafka had asked the dancer to perform just one time more. Kafka's dream-sequences contain the uncomfortable contrasts of the grace of the dancer and the loathsome gestures of unconscious intriguers;there are abrupt changes of mood to sorrow and despair. Flowers presented by all the Princes of Europe appear in the dreams as do trains and trams on which Eduardova travels with two vigorous violinists.

The full score for Arnold Schonberg’s Serenade Op.24 a seven movement serenade for Chamber ensemble consisting of Clarinet Bass Clarinet Mandolin Guitar Violin Viola Cello and Bass Soloist (in the fourth movement). This is an exquisite work by perhaps the most important European composer of the last 150years.

Michael Nyman's Musique A Grande Vitesse (MGV) translates as ‘high speed music’ and was commissioned by the Festival de Lille for the inauguration of the TGV North EuropeanParis-Lille line in 1993. This piece of sheet music runs continuously but was conceived as an abstract imaginary journey; or rather five inter-connected journeys each ending with a slow mainly stepwise melody which isonly heard in its 'genuine' form when the piece reaches its destination. Thematic 'transformation' is a key to MGV as a whole. Throughout the piece ideas - rhythmic melodic harmonic motivic textural -constantly change their identity as they pass through different musical 'environments'. The opening bars establish both a recurrent rhythmic principle - 9 11 or 13-beat rhythmic cycles heard against a regular 8 - and aharmonic process - chord sequences (mainly over C and E) which have the note E in common. (Coincidentally MGV begins in C and ends in E). A later scalic syncopated figure (again first heard over C E and A)begins the second section featuring Brass in D flat. The topography of MGV should be experienced without reference to planning description or timetables. Its tempo changes and unpredictable slowings downbear no logical relation to the high speed of the Paris-Lille journey while the temptation to treat MGV as a concerto grosso with the Michael Nyman band as the ripeno was resisted: more suitably theband (amplified in live performance) lays down the tracks on which MGV runs.