Musicologist Rollo Myers wrote of Philip Cannon, ‘One is conscious of a strong and instinctive musikal personality and a purposefulness which excludes all irrelevancies and anything in the nature of “padding” ... in listening to his music one is never conscious of any deliberate striving for effect; what one hears is a direct and personal utterance’. Each of the three works presented here demonstrate that powerful combination of clarity and originality. The music is an extension of the man – unaffected, fearlessly independent and emotionally honest - and he was unsparing of himse lf in his quest to realise the full potential of his material. As Cannon himself put it, ‘it is what the music says that counts in sincere compositions, and this should be said as simply, lucidly and directly as possible, and should flow inevitably’.