Malcolm Arnold

'Contemporary-music-without-tears has always been his aim and this succinct little three-movement work showed him as skilful as ever in unpretentious directness of utterance as it were in the vernacular. For the soloist it is a gift alike in the first movement's almost indispensable fanfare-like challenges in melody sometmes as nostalgic as Poulenc (especially haunting in the seductively scored central Andante) and in the Finale's flashes of virtuosity.'Jona Chissell The Times 31 January 1983