---

Programme Note

For Richard Hand who gave the first performance on October 19, 1989, at the British Music Information Centre in London.

In 1988 Peter Dickinson worked closely with Richard Hand and Tom Dupré when composing Cellars Clough Duo, which was commissioned by Fisher, Firth and Co. of Huddersfield and premiered by the Hand-Dupré Duo at the Wigmore Hall on May 1 of that year. Dickinson had not composed for the guitar before so he borrowed an instrument from Richard Hand and worked his way into the technique by writing these Five Explorations which became the basis for the more complex Duo as well.

Each piece explores a different type of texture. The first suggests bell sounds in a landscape; the second, fragments of Latin-American music; the third is an elegy; the fourth again suggests bells; and the last one is a moto perpetuo in varied metres.