Soon after leaving the Royal College of Music in 1949, I had written an ambitious Piano Quartet - I was quite proud of it for some years - but wrote nothing else in the genre until a Piano Quintet in 1966. This was to a commission. So also, the very next year, was my first Piano Trio. This was premiered at the Conway Hall as part of a ‘Music in Our Time Festival’, an audacious forum for (mainly) young composers and performers, brainchild of the pianist Ian Lake, which enlivened the periphery of the London scene over a succession of autumn seasons. I was a happy participant on at least four occasions, two of which have gone on echoing down the years. One was an entertainment called The Old Cigarette- Lighter, the other precursor to undreamed later ventures in trio writing, all of which bear traces of a carefree approach to composition which, thankfully, has never quite deserted me. (Stephen Dodgson)