Markevitch's achievement does not lie in having produced, at 18, a work stamped with the skill of a thoroughly experienced musician. We might well apply on his behalf the observation Radiguet made in declining a success due only to his precocity: ‘Age is nothing. All the great poets were writing when they were seventeen. The greatest are those who succeed in making us forget it.’ But it is wonderful to see the young Markevitch achieving such sure mastery in a field where there is no safeguard to keep him from error and no restriction to prevent him from exceeding his powers.