PROGRAMME NOTES

Sonatina for Flute (or Recorder) and Piano

For Michael Ashby (flute) and Anne Davis (1955) and John Turner (recorder) (2013)

Allegro vivace – Andante - Presto

This work, written during the composer’s second year as a Cambridge undergraduate, was originally for flute and piano. The premiere was given by Michael Ashby and Anne Davis at Queens’ College, Cambridge, where Dickinson was Organ Scholar, on 30 October 1955: the first London performance was given by the distinguished duo of John Francis and Millicent Silver at an SPNM concert in the Wigmore Hall on 2 July 1957. John Turner, who found that the Sonatina fitted the recorder almost exactly, gave the first performance with recorder (treble: tenor in the slow movement) at the William Alwyn Festival in St Edmund’s Church, Southwold, on 11 October 2013.

The first movement is in a concise sonata-form design; the second is a canon between the soloist and the piano right hand, with the former in the minor key and the latter major; the final presto is simply a comedy where the melodies from the previous movements reappear.