Twelve of the pieces (listen to the recordings) were subsequently recorded by Clive Williamson (Produced by Sebastian Forbes and Engineered by William Konitzer). 

Clive Williamson writes:

As with so many performance projects, the origins of this programme lie in a variety of places. In part they come from a component of the first-year piano test in which all students are required to learn a short piece without assistance in seven days. Though the students find this demanding, it is actually a very good test of their musicianship. The Spectrum series deserves mention too: compiled by Thalia Myers and published by the Associated Board, it is a collection of short piano pieces by distinguished composers presented for students at a variety of levels of ability. I was also aware of the component of the composition course to write a piece of one minute for one instrument: it is challenge for a composer to be able to communicate a sense of personal style within this time-frame. Finally, for me as a performer with a great deal of experience of working in new music as well as with student composers in workshops, there was clearly something personal which I felt able to contribute.

The Surrey composers represented here were asked to write a piano piece of not more than one minute. Pieces were to be computer processed and were not to involve any advance preparation of the instrument. A strict deadline of 19th December 2003 gave me a short period in which to learn the pieces (as well as material for many other concerts). Any material which fell outside these criteria or was late would only be included at my discretion. Two pieces only have been excluded, one because it was around double the required length and one because it was in a poor manuscript. In performance many of the pieces may be a little longer than one minute, though none will exceed 90 seconds.

My learning of these pieces was to be done without the direct collaboration of the composers. It would be impractical to work with such a large number of composers in such a limited time, and I wanted to make sure that the composers were forced to prepare performance materials which accurately reflected their intentions: after all, this is the professional way of working. My role is purely to give a musical interpretation of the material as faithfully as possible. A few of these pieces have what I consider to be mistakes or ambiguous instructions, and I didn't consider it part of my brief to correct these. After all, students need to consider if they have expressed their compositional ideas clearly and succinctly. You will hear the pieces warts and all! Further discussions will follow in composition seminars.

Additionally, there are contributions from four members of staff, and I also wanted to include Haiku by Jonathan Harvey: all are examples of how professional composers can put across complex compositional thought, expressiveness and a strong sense of style in a very short piece.

A huge debt of gratitude is owed to Sebastian Forbes and Steve Goss, for help and support in designing and administering the whole project, as well as with programme planning. Finally, and most important of all, my thanks to everyone who has composed a piece for this concert: it has been an immensely rewarding project with which to be involved.