Listed on Trip Advisor as no. 83 of 86 things to do in Reading, Cintra Park is my local park and the venue for many happy trips to the swings with my two children. Cintra Park in the Dark contains a series of five Nocturnes of contrasting (if always nocturnal) characters. Nocturnes 1-3 establish a gradual build in intensity, culminating in Nocturne 4, a fast and decidedly urban nocturne. It is the last nocturne that lends the piece its title, which is a nod to Charles Ives’ piece Central Park in the Dark. As in the Ives, nocturnal sounds (here provided by an offstage horn) are overlaid upon a slow chorale played by the strings.

The piece is played continuously without a break, and interspersed between the five Nocturnes are four movements entitled Bricks & Brickwork in Reading, which lift their title from Adam Sowan’s surprisingly interesting book of the same name. In these movements, instruments play unvarying melodic fragments which are overlaid upon each other in varying patterns – almost like brickwork. The fourth and final Bricks movement constitutes the climax of the piece, and forms the most overt reference to the source upon which most of the piece is based: Sumer is icumen in, a medieval English round, the oldest surviving manuscript of which was found at Reading Abbey.