Arthritis in Alwyn’s hands made composition difficult, but by the beginning of 1980 a new drug was alleviating the pain. When a commission for a Nonet for Wind Instruments arrived he was presented with a challenge.

A fortnight later the work was rapidly turning into a Concerto di Camera for solo flute and wind octet. After three months labour the work was named the Concerto for flute and eight wind instruments, completed in June 1980 and given its first performance by the English Chamber Orchestra Wind Ensemble. It was at this time that the recorder player John Turner, who wanted to acquire an Alwyn painting for his music-room, managed an introduction to Alwyn through his friend Thomas Pitfield, an associate of Alwyn’s at the Composers’ Guild. Turner was invited for afternoon tea at Lark Rise, but ‘Conversation between the mouthfuls of scone was not easy, as both Bill and Mary were somewhat taciturn, and I for my part was rather nonplussed by the nude paintings of an already elderly Mary on the sitting room wall’. Turner wanted Alwyn to compose a recorder work for him, but Alwyn said the Concerto for flute and eight wind instruments would be his final composition. Turner was then showed Alwyn’s sketchbook, but all the sketches were of nude women (not what Turner had anticipated for his walls).