Four Tunes from the Scottish Island of Sanday. Start Point is a collection of four tunes written for the Sanday Fiddle Club. First performed in their entirety in 2006 at the St Magnus Festival, the names of the tunes are names of places on the Orkney Islands. Evocative and unassuming, the appealing character and flexibility of these works reflects their genesis. They are suited to a variety of purposes and could be played by both string quartet and string ensemble. Accessible by standard and style, to the extent that they are rooted in the community they form an illustration of Maxwell Davies' engagement with his locality, where he has lived since the 1970s.
SKU: HL.14021025
ISBN 9780711986138. 5.5x7.5x0.164 inches.
Miniature Score. This work was commissioned by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. It was first performed on 13th May 1998 London. This piece is based on a genuine old tune 'Maxwell's Strathspey' which the composer found in an 1824 collection of Scottish melodies, and which unfolds at the start of the piece on solo cello. Variations and a bold up-tempo to the quick dance we know as a reel ultimately yield to the magic that has been promised right at the start: the northern lights take over at the end of the piece. Its inspiration comes from a walk to a community event in Hoy Hall, during which Davies saw the lights in the sky pulsing in and out of time with the sounds coming from the hall. Duration 12 minutes. Conductor's score and orchestral parts are available on hire.
SKU: HL.14021002
ISBN 9780711955103. 9.0x12.0x0.054 inches.
Two dances for flute and harp from Peter Maxwell Davies' ballet Caroline Mathilde. A new instrumentation restores this linked pair of dances from Davies's second full-length ballet, Caroline Mathilde based on the story of the eighteenth-century British princess sent in marriage to Denmark, to the eighteenth-century milieu of the work's setting and musical world. The period manners - a gavotte in the first dance, a gigue at the start of the second - are typically overlaid with the composer's Scottishness. In general the harp has an accompanying role, but it comes forward alone in the second movement, which ends with bravura from both instruments. These two dances were first performed in September 1993 at the Northlands Festival by David Nicholson and Eluned Pierce. Score and flute part. Duration c. 5mins. Harp part edited by Elune Pierce.
SKU: HL.14020992
ISBN 9780711936805. 9.0x12.0x0.185 inches.
Unusually for him, Davies starts his Bassoon Concerto not with slow music but with speed and brilliance: the opening is a Presto, initiated by the strings, and only at the entry of the soloist does the tempo relax to that of a real introduction. Out of this grow a big dancing Allegro. The slow movement begins and ends with a simple song, around fantastical ornamentation from the soloist. The finale is again a recitative and dance, with a slow coda. The whole work is an immense show of stamina, poetry and athleticism for the bassoon, set against an orchestra coloured by low wind (alto flute, clarinet in A, bass clarinet, contrabassoon, horns). Bassoon part with piano reduction of the orchestral score.
SKU: HL.49019531
ISBN 9790220133879. UPC: 884088945466. 8.25x11.75x0.194 inches.
Peter Maxwell Davies was thinking of individual and communal vulnerability when composing this piece, especially in relation to the problem of climate change and his home in the Orkney Islands, which is under threat from rising sea levels. However, this theme is not a completely negative one: Davies claims we must all enter the last door of light but the journey is full of light and joy. The melody at the start of the work, which Davies composed in the '70's and never used, could be an Island folk melody and is subject to constant transformation throughout the piece before reaching apotheosis at the end.
SKU: HL.49017923
ISBN 9790220131141. UPC: 884088567217. 9.0x12.0x0.125 inches.
Sir Peter Maxwell Davies is universally acknowledged as one of the foremost composers of our time and as he reaches his 75th birthday in 2009 he remains prolific.The sonata for violin and piano was written for the virtuoso violinist, Ilya Gringolts and first performed at the St Magnus Festival in Orkney in 2008. The work is principally concerned with Italian architecture and the music takes both performers and audience across an imaginary walkway over Rome as proposed by the architect Giuseppe Rebecchini. Starting at the 17th Century Chiesa Nuova the exceptional journey passes Renaissance churches, exhibition spaces, the river Tiber, glass facades, sculptures and even a prison where a Lazio folk tune can be heard echoing from behind the walls. The journey ends 15 minutes later at Gianicolo, an area where one can take in breathtaking views over the whole city.
