Rhian Samuel is 60 this year. Never one to follow the conventional paths in contemporary composition or music-making, her works are sometimes tricky to pigeonhole, though this does not seem to have impaired their performance or appreciation. Her new piano quartet, Light and Water (2003), received its première as the centrepiece of the opening concert of the Hampstead and Highgate Festival, given by the Fidelio Quartet and framed by Schumann's op. 47 Quartet and the Elgar Quintet (in which they were joined by violinist Katherine Gowers).