Written in the conventional 3 movement format, quick - slow - quick, this 'little concerto' was perhaps dedicated to a promising student of the composer's..

....I had known exactly what I wanted to do from early childhood: write music.' says Alan Ridout in his autobiography 'A Composer's Life'. Although he didn't begin to learn the piano until he was nine, Ridout gained a distinction at Grade Eight three years later by which time he had already written over one hundred works. He left school at fifteen to spend two years at the Guildhall School of Music before moving to The Royal College of Music where he studied first with Gordon Jacob and then Herbert Howells. A good number of his compositions were performed during this period at concerts of the Society for the Promotion of New Music. Ridout's first job was to take charge of music teaching in a Kentish preparatory school but his own music studies continued and branched out into electronic and microtonal techniques with Henk Badings in the Netherlands. Returning to the UK, he launched himself into the study of early music with Thurston Dart at Cambridge University