Presteigne is no longer a secret. This may be a festival known for having more composers per square yard than the others, but it never makes its commitment to new music seem uncompromising or remote. Rather, it succeeds in creating an ambiance where, far from feeling intimidated by commissioned work, the audience accepts it as a kind of aural orienteering, more challenging than rambling in familiar foothills and potentially more rewarding.

Joe Duddell's Mnemonic, its title inspired by the Théatre de Complicité play dealing with memory and time, was premiered in the festival's opening concert. Scored for solo flute and harp with string orchestra, it was described by Duddell as a "chamber concerto", a disclaimer against assumptions of scale or pretension. It did eschew display, with no harp glissandi or pyrotechnics to risk cliche, but the characteristic timbres of the solo instruments - Katherine Baker's flute full and smooth, Suzanne Willison's brittle harp - were set against each other as well as the strings.

The nature of the music was more reflective than Duddell's usual style. And while there is an irony in a piece called Mnemonic being so understated and economical in its material that there is nothing obviously memorable to it, its elegantly crafted block-structure with a constant interplay of metre and rhythmic pattern managed to intrigue the ear in a way that imprints itself quite firmly in the mind.

Part of what is satisfying at Presteigne is the fine acoustic of St Andrew's Church, which brings real clarity to felicities of colour more often lost. Thanks, too, to sensitive playing from the Presteigne Festival Orchestra under the direction of artistic director George Vass, inner counterpoints in Elgar's E minor Serenade emerged subtly, as did the timpani in Poulenc's G minor Concerto, in which Jennifer Bate was the organ soloist. Bartok's Divertimento was the nicely acerbic foil.

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