This piece has a broad moderately paced first movement which leads to a sparkling scherzo which in turn gives way to an extremely sparsely textured movement that features the horn and its less frequently used techniques. The whole piece turns on this movement then a couple of crisp arpeggios act as a premature cinematic transition into the big finale the longest and the technically most demanding movement of the piece.

A colourful set of pieces opening with a majestic Entrada and closing with an exuberant Burlesque. Painting on cover: The Great Dune. Oil painting by John Newbury 2008.

Floraison is a terrific 1975 composition by John McCabe from The Goddess Triloigy for Horn in F and Piano accompaniment. Floraison translates as 'flowering' or 'blossoming' and this piece depicts the flower maiden and love goddess Blodeuwedd ('bloom maiden') who is also an owl goddess. She was made up of nine kinds of flowers and in one pagan ritual her husband was sacrificed ascending after death into the skies in the form of an eagle. This composition is cast in the form of a passacaglia in which there are nine variations but perhaps more important than this is the initial image behind the piece which was that of a flower graduallyopening and then closing. This image governs the shape of the music with its increasingly elaborate and intense growth towards its climax and then a return at the close to the opening ideas.

This work commemorates the 50th anniversary of the untimely death of the brilliant Horn player Dennis Brain. The solo version is intended for instrumentalists of Grade 6 and above.Peter Maxwell Davies is among the most prolific iconoclastic versatile and energetic of contemporary British composers. Among the best known of his many works are Eight Songs for a Mad King The Lighthouse chamber opera and short Piano work Farewell to Stromness.