Peter Dickinson does not look like an octogenarian: there must be some illusion. I would put him at a good ten years younger. The bracing sea air of Lytham St Anne’s, where he was born, and Aldeburgh, where he now lives, must have done its job particularly well. But more to the point, Dickinson himself has always done his job – three jobs, to be precise – and there is no doubt that this has kept him young. What one experiences in his presence is not so much a boundless energy, which might be wearying for all concerned, as a determination to keep at it, and at the same time to keep fresh. This by no means easy balance has entailed a canny but probably instinctive combination of both fixed and varied focus, a combination to be borne in mind not just in looking back on his career but when considering the music he has composed.

The varied focus is evident in his unusual ability to have pursued to the highest professional standards a life of composing, performing (as a pianist) and scholarship. Students of university music departments in Britain have traditionally done all three of these as a kind of Holy Trinity of their religion. Not that their necessity or even existence strikes most music students as self-evident. Many are dragged kicking and screaming into composition; most arrive knowing only that they are performers, performance being what the world thinks the music professor teaches; but some of these happily give up playing and singing for writing essays and a dissertation as their undergraduate career progresses. Others equally happily continue to pursue all three branches of their art until graduation, often with distinction. But making a career of all three is another matter, and here Dickinson has stood out.