'I responded to this exciting but rather daunting commission by writing a very lively and I hope very accessible piece which I decided before I started composing should be full of tunes. I wrote it in memory of my dear friend Sheila MacCrindle who died in 1993... although this Partita is in her memory it never occurred to me to make it gloomy or dirge-like; that is not how I remember her.' Ri…