Now at last I can say I have heard paint dry, and can attest that it was an event I was pleased to have experienced.

Morton Feldman’s Clarinet and String Quartet (1983) is a continuous 40-minute movement where nothing (or everything) happens. It is slow-moving, its dynamics are subdued, apart from a few clarinet flurries it is rhythmically inert, it makes immense demands upon the muscular control of the string-players with no enlivening outbreaks for their arms, and, of course, immense demands upon the audience (I for one feared to look at my watch, as I didn’t want to see how little time had elapsed).

And yet: in keeping with the entire ethos in music of this nature, little events loom large. So when the clarinet, playing mostly in its middle register, makes the slightest deviation from the tiny four-note motif which is the basis of the work, we notice. When scalic clusters build up, note by instrument, the textures alter. It is rather like Debussy’s piano piece Des Pas sur la Neige writ large, and has the same kind of effect, though coming from a different direction, as much of Philip Glass.

Award-winning Shabaka Hutchings was the persuasive clarinettist in a work this past student of King Edward’s Aston advocates so much, supported by the awesome concentration of the Ligeti Quartet, recent graduates who are rapidly making their mark in music composed during the last century.

And Hutchings himself is also a composer, and in the first half of this concert, sadly part of Music at Leasowes Bank’s final festival after 33 years, we had marvelled at the premiere of his Leasowes Bank commission, Octavia, simultaneously funky and pastoral, compelling, bubbling with life (what a contrast to the Feldman!), and full of incident - with one huge surprise which I won’t reveal. At last we have a programming complement to the Mozart and Brahms clarinet quintets.

This was my last visit to remote Leasowes Bank. Even after more years than I can remember, I’m never quite sure if I’m on the right route, and during this happy time I took the major decision that the driving descent of the Long Mynd was no longer a good idea. But the trip was always worth it, jazz saxophonist John Williams and his wife Frances creating a wonderful ambience in their hilltop farm (and offering display opportunities to local visual artists), the setting for a whole range of music, from world, through jazz, to classical and contemporary. They have plans to continue elsewhere. If they do, I’ll be there.