Davies: An Orkney Wedding, with Sunrise

Featuring

Ben Gernon
Sean Shibe
Scottish Chamber Orchestra
Sir Peter Maxwell Davies

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Composer Biography

Peter Maxwell Davies, known as Max, composed music about and for Orkney, his adopted home, for more than half his life.

Composition History

An Orkney Wedding, with Sunrise was commissioned and first performed by John Williams and the Boston Pops Orchestra in May 1985, at the suggestion of Richard Rodney Bennett.

Composition History

The concert overture Ebb of Winter was composed by Peter Maxwell Davies in early 2013, as he faced serious health diagnoses and began work on his Tenth Symphony.

Composition History

Ebb of Winter was written to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra (SCO), the first ensemble to give Peter Maxwell Davies a residency as both composer and conductor.

Cultural Impact

Farewell to Stromness, originally a piano interlude from Peter Maxwell Davies's The Yellow Cake Revue, is a tune by which he is very well known and has been arranged for various instruments.

Composer's Artistic Vision

Peter Maxwell Davies described the view from his croft over Rackwick Bay, where the Atlantic and North Sea meet, as a "huge alchemical crucible" rich in speculative connotations.

Composition History

Peter Maxwell Davies's move to Orkney in 1970, after his house burned down, profoundly influenced his musical style, leading to a transparency of sound and simplification of gesture.