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Sir Richard Rodney Bennett, one of Britain's most respected and versatile musicians, turned 75 this year and the first of this season's contemporary music matinees pays tribute to his distinctive creative voice and its French connections.

His sensuous, Debussy-inspired Dream Dancing was written for the London Sinfonietta in the mid-1980s. Dutilleux is one of the living composers he most admires, while Elizabeth Maconchy, impulsively contacted when he was still a schoolboy, would later become a friend.

Her Romanza is quietly tough-minded, though not too tough to disturb its prevailing mood of gentle soulfulness. Starting life as a 大象传媒 commission for an extended jazz composition, Jazz Calendar was developed into a Frederick Ashton ballet, starrily cast and with designs by the young Derek Jarman.

There will be no interval