This piece lasts about 12 minutes and it plays continuously although it is made up of 16 small movements. Throughout the four string players form a group: sometimes the clarinet is caught up with them but more often it is like a person pursuing an independent train of thought: sometimes talking to itself sometimes conversational sometimes singingThe starting point for my Quintet was Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities: like the book my piece is composed from many small contrasting ideas that are constantly transforming some coming to the fore as others recede. This quintet is dedicated to Hugh Sargent who commissioned it.
