Our Chair in Composition, Professor Michael Zev Gordon was commissioned by this year’s Cheltenham Festival to write a companion piece to Britten’s Serenade for tenor, horn and strings. His The Gleam of Hidden Skies - with texts by Byron, Blake, Larkin, cummings and Isaac Rosenberg - was premiered by Toby Spence, Richard Watkins and the City of London Sinfonia conducted by Stephen Layton, and was enthusiastically received. The Guardian commented, ‘…the urgent opening…was an indication of an almost fevered inspiration immediately set in train’.