As Laurence Olivier observes, it is extraordinary that such music of power and romantic intensity should have emerged from the head of this unlikely genius. Born in relative poverty, went to a rough school, admitted as a chorister by grace, youngest undergraduate of Oxford University since Henry VIII, dropped out and "scrounged" off richer friends, clumsy at playing musical instruments and turned to composition to justify his existence! Hear the music and you will agree with his wife, Susana, that his life and career had a kind of divine inevitability about it. The opening scene shows him at his piano, complaining about the variety of spectacles he has and pointing out where his most important composing device - the eraser - is situated for use! So much said by so little.