Peter Maxwell Davies – Eight Songs for A Mad King / Performed by Music Theatre Wales
“Music Theatre Wales is revisiting an iconic work of the 1960s, Peter Maxwell Davies’s Eight Songsfor a Mad King… Kelvin Thomas’s performance is one of the most compelling I’ve seen. A lumbering, shambling mountain of a king, in wig and nightdress, Thomas’s portrayal of the deranged George III moves from horror to pity with a hundred nuances of human affliction in between. And his vocal virtuosity is so closely integrated with the voices of the instrumental ensemble, conducted by Michael Rafferty, that they seem a single nerve system — sentient, shattered, always in shock.”
Times, March 2013
Peter Maxwell Davies – Symphony No.6 / Performed at Royal Philharmonic Orchestra’s Maxwell Davies Celebration Concert
“Revisiting one of its own commissions, the RPO, conducted by Martyn Brabbins, lavished every drop of virtuosity on a toweringly powerful 45-minute piece that always knows where it’s going, even if listeners dither. Have faith, the music says, and it will finally make sense. So it did, through a shifting kaleidoscope pummelled by violence, anger, raw nature and, briefly, a jazzy brass band. The work’s humane complexities were considerably enhanced by the warm Cadogan Hall acoustic; such a welcome change from hearing contemporary music in a dry box or soup bowl. The composer’s introductory remarks helped too.”
Times, March 2013
“Entire programmes of contemporary music are not the RPO's natural territory; still, two of the three works on this programme were, in fact, commissioned and premiered by the orchestra…What came across most strongly in this context was how deeply Davies's music is rooted in a sense of place – and not just through his use of Orcadian folk music, though that was an important element. In the weighty Symphony No. 6, it is the changeable, mystical Orkney weather that insinuates its way into the score. Throughout, there was a sense of nature as a massive, inscrutable force; the music repeatedly building up, but always evolving. Davies, however, saves making this explicit until the final seconds, when the last notes die out under the sound of rainsticks.
Jack Liebeck was the soloist in the Violin Concerto No 1, bringing idiomatic touches to a work that transplants folk fiddle gestures into the framework of a grand romantic concerto. Finally came An Orkney Wedding, with Sunrise, a vividly remembered account of a celebration at which band and guests got riotously plastered before Davies walked home into the morning light. Sunrise comes in the form of a ceremonially dressed bagpiper, playing his way on to the stage: not exactly the way Ravel or Strauss wrote theirs, but a deliciously exuberant evocation of joy. That must have been some hangover.”
Guardian, March 2013
Peter Maxwell Davies — Symphonies Nos. 4 & 5 / Released on Naxos with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and Philharmonia Orchestra
“Of the hallowed number of nine symphonies that Davies has produced, the single-movement Fifth had the most vocal immediate acclaim (a Proms world premiere in 1994), while the chastely chamber-orchestral, four-movement but continuous Fourth (1989) is perhaps the least talked-about. Its subtle formal thinking rewards repeated listenings, whereas No 5, though still terse, is more colourful and direct. Cast in a multiplicity of subsections, of greatly varying length, it is a newfangled study in symphonic integration. This account is incisive.”
Sunday Times, September 2012
Peter Maxwell Davies - Symphony No. 9 (London Premiere)
“This brilliantly crafted work — Haydn¬esque in duration, Mahlerian in scope — is far from the kind of ceremonial work one might expect from the master of the Queen’s music. Indeed, its attitude to militarism and war is not so far from Shostakovich’s in his Seventh and 10th. A memorable concert in a terrific week for British musicians at the Proms.“
Sunday Times, September 2012
“This new symphony is very much fired, too, by its own internal conflicts. Not only do its dark timpani rolls, its sounds and alarums, and its anarchic interpolations from brass sextet speak of the chaos of war, they also obliquely summon up spectres of royal pomp and circumstance... Does it celebrate, mourn or warn? Like the Shostakovich that followed it, it does all three simultaneously. And it is those collisions and ambivalences that give the work its power. The symphony is typical Maxwell Davies: the old anarchist peeping over the parapet of the status quo and finding cunning compositional means with which to hold together menace and mischief. The work’s main material is artfully transformed by interval and rhythmic bending. Vasily Petrenko and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic played the piece with meticulous commitment and assurance.”
Times, September 2012
“Played without a break, the symphony unfolds darkly, before a brass sextet, seated above and to one side of the orchestra, introduces a succession of jaunty flourishes. These unleash a series of disintegrations and crises from which the remainder of the work seeks a fragile closure... indisputably one of Maxwell Davies’ most engaged orchestral works and it may well claim a lasting place in the repertoire.”
Guardian, September 2012
“Undertones of war pervaded the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra’s return to the Proms [with] the London premiere of Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’s Symphony No.9. A single movement protest against the futility of Britain’s involvement in the wars on Iraq and Afghanistan, Davies’s work builds slowly in unsettling waves of textured rhythm punctuated by blasts of distorted fanfare from a brass sextet positioned at arm’s length from the orchestra. The overall effect was disconcerting but intentionally so, as chief conductor Vasily Petrenko’s fastidious control ensured the piece remained coherent all the way to its brittle closure.
Liverpool Daily Post, September 2012
Peter Maxwell Davies - The Last Island / Wigmore Hall
“After the interval came a welcome re-hearing of The Last Island (2009) by Peter Maxwell Davies. Taking inspiration from two islets bordering the Orkney island of Sanday, along with natural and man-made facets to be found there, it found the composer turning to the string sextet after an intensive involvement with the quartet medium. Its single movement alternates slow and fast sections with a formal intensification that leads to the climactic emergence of the 'Ave Maris Stella' plainchant often deployed by Davies, but seldom so atmospherically as here. In sustained emotional impact, indeed, this is as impressive as anything he has written over recent years.”
Richard Whitehouse, Classical Source, March 2012
Peter Maxwell Davies - Kommilitonen! (US Premiere)
“There are many impressive things about “Kommilitonen!,” the new opera by Peter Maxwell Davies, with a libretto by David Pountney, which had its American premiere at the Juilliard School on Wednesday night. Best of all is Mr. Davies’s exhilarating score. Here, for once, is a modern opera that exudes musical modernism. Mr. Davies was a major figure in the European avant-garde. Over the years he may have softened the hard edges of his modernist language. But at 77 he still writes bracingly gritty and complex music. In his many dramatic works and unconventional operas, Mr. Davies has excelled at putting contemporary-music techniques to arresting theatrical purposes.”
The New York Times, November 2011
“With timid tonality pervading so many new operas, it was refreshing to hear the edgy, acerbic sounds of Peter Maxwell Davies's "Kommilitonen!" presented by the Juilliard School last week. Mr. Maxwell Davies and librettist David Pountney, who also directed, used that agitated quality and a range of musical styles to deftly weave together three tales of student political action.”
“Mr. Pountney's kaleidoscopic libretto and Mr. Davies's music vary the dramatic treatment of these stories, giving each a distinctive profile and keeping the show moving as it switches among them.”
The Wall Street Journal, November 2011
"Kommilitonen!" is an earnest and engaging creation, an agitprop pageant that proves surprisingly entertaining. Moreover, the Juilliard Opera singers and orchestra, led by conductor Anne Manson, performed it with an enthusiasm and polish that had the 77-year-old composer beaming when he came out for his curtain call. Davies' lifetime of experience writing large-scale compositions shows in his expert use of the orchestra. The rhythmically varied, basically tonal score is filled with snatches of melody that hint at Chinese marches, American spirituals and German lieder ' tunes that often melt into one another. In a compelling moment during the interrogation of the Chinese parents, a relentlessly upbeat chorus for the Red Guard plays against a string lament for the hapless victims.”
The Associated Press, November 2011
“Rumors were that an “Occupy”-something group would disrupt Wednesday night’s US premiere of “Kommilitonen!” But the Juilliard Opera performance went off without offstage fireworks, and proved to be a well-crafted and moving meditation on student activism... A post-performance protest outside the theater suggested the 20 or so “Occupy Opera” demonstrators had at least done their homework: Among the slogans they chanted was a line from this opera’s rousing finale, “There is no quota on freedom!”
The New York Post, November 2011
Peter Maxwell Davies - Kommilitonen! (World Premiere)
“A master symphonist. It was a triumph: an extraordinary testament to the fact that, at the age of 76, his creativity is radiantly alive but more judicious than it was when he was half this age. Kommilitonen! Is an ensemble piece that prioritises collective singing – which from start to finish was magnificent. But the evening’s real star was Maxwell Davies, whose music gave these young performers something genuinely worthwhile to work with”
Daily Telegraph, March 2011
“The music works with exemplary theatrical skill; Here is proof that Maxwell Davies, who says he never intended to write another opera, still had a serious success inside him.”
Financial Times, March 2011
“His score is extraordinarily fluent: the vocal lines are perfectly judged and the instrumental writing full of wonderful touches, with marching band, jazz trio, solo harp and erhu players on stage. It is as good as any theatre score he has ever composed.”
Guardian, five stars, March 2011
“If you’re looking for a glorious, heart-warming pageant of humanity, [Maxwell Davies’s] latest opera will do nicely. It’s a bold and beautiful assertion of the transformative power of truth.”
Evening Standard, five stars, March 2011
“The score works strikingly well. Kommilitonen! Visits Juilliard School, New York, its co- commissioner, in November, but I’m sure that won’t be the end of this stirring blast of an opera.”
Times, March 2011
“Peter Maxwell Davies’s astounds with the world premiere of his brilliant opera for students about protest movements. The moral force that Davies and Pountney dramatise is felt in the brilliance and blinding conviction with which this production is brought off. The piece moves forward in an undoubtedly compelling way, and the score has an energy belying the composer’s 76 years. I didn’t want Act II’s opening stretch, a transformation of “Michael, row the boat ashore”, to end.”
Sunday Times, March 2011
“How satisfying to have a full-scale opera written with the fluency of a composer who, at 76 and with several early theatre works to his name, understands the stage. Pastiche is skilful and immediate, only the showy top strata of a many layered and subtle score.”
Observer, March 2011
“What emerged last weekend at the Royal Academy of Music is a gripping new opera about – for once – something important. Maxwell Davies’s score is mercurial, moving with fluidity that matches the rapidly changing scenes. His vocal lines are lyrical, and the composer is at his most inventive in embracing styles from American jauntiness to Chinese marching-band music.”
Sunday Telegraph, March 2011
Peter Maxwell Davies - Sea Orpheus / World Premiere at Carnegie Hall
“Mr. Davies describes the work as ‘strictly Neo-Classical,’ mainly because it draws on Bachian rhythms, embraces canonic writing and uses Baroque techniques to transform the chant theme. But where Neo-Classicists in times past hinted at an 18th-century harmonic language, Mr. Davies wrote in his own contemporary style. It is, however, an engagingly virtuosic score.”
The New York Times, February 2010
Peter Maxwell Davies - Miss Donnithorne’s Maggot / Kings Place
“The inside of [Miss Donnithorne’s] deranged mind is a vast theatre for the imagination of Maxwell Davies. Pastiche, violent vocal lurches and vocalisations, and a calculatedly wild exploitation of the expressive extremes of each instrument conjure the “white lady of silvered Sydney town” who, in the lunar beauty of her moonstruck days, “wept like a xylophone and laughed like a tree”.”
Times, January 2010
Peter Maxwell Davies - Taverner / Released on NMC Records with the BBC Symphony Orchestra & Oliver Knussen
“Taverner is a work that blazes with theatricality and dramatic power, and is underpinned by a score of remarkable variety and sometimes visceral intensity.”
Guardian, October 2009
“Taverner, first staged at Covent Garden in 1972, is among the most significant operas by a British composer born after Britten and Tippett, yet is only now out on disc. It is a baffling delay, but the quality of this account, recorded in Maida Vale studios by Radio 3 in 1996, makes the wait worthwhile. The score that seemed so challenging, dissonant and problematic (entire scenes enacted to the accompaniment of early instruments, making for precarious balance in the opera house) is realised here with as much smoothness and expressive vigour as if it were, indeed, a Britten opera. The end of Act 1 is shattering. The cast, led by Martyn Hill as the 16th-century composer, is uniformly superb.”
Times, November 2009
Peter Maxwell Davies - Taverner / Performed by the BBC Scottish Symphony and Martyn Brabbins
“Why has it taken so long to revive Peter Maxwell Davies's early opera Taverner? […] I was blown away by its emotive power.”
The Scotsman, November 2009
“No work could have been more fitting to bring the 75th birthday celebrations of Peter Maxwell Davies in Glasgow to a close than his monumental opera Taverner… Yet what this performance with the BBCSSO under Martyn Brabbins demonstrated beyond doubt is that the opera is a masterpiece. Betrayal, hatred, hysteria and the terrible things people do in the name of religion – all these Max trademarks are present, but in Taverner they combine to make something that is horrific, funny and strangely moving.”
Guardian, November 2009
“Henceforward there will be no excuse to ignore this searing, sumptuous score, of which a new and worthy production has been long overdue.”
The Herald, 9 November 2009
Peter Maxwell Davies - Symphony No. 4 / Performed by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and Oliver Knussen
“Written specifically for chamber orchestra, its four intricate movements lead into each other, explosive, unworldly, tremulously powerful...”
Times, November 2009
“Like any good book or painting, every repeat visit reveals something new and undiscovered in much of Max's earlier music.”
The Scotsman, November 2009
“Max's fourth symphony proved just as illuminating. […] It is a misleading work, written quite deliberately for intimate chamber orchestra resources, yet packs a real punch. The final bars brought a sense of exhaustion, quiet elation and acceptance, offering yet another illustration of how the Max at 75 celebrations in Glasgow are by no means a superficial birthday bash. They are an invaluable opportunity for us to reassess musical landmarks in the life of a genuinely unique and interesting composer.”
The Scotsman, November 2009
Peter Maxwell Davies - Overture, St Francis of Assisi / Performed by the BBC Scottish Symphone and Ilan Volkov
“Take his latest work, the overture St Francis of Assisi, premiered last week by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. There is an unmistakable familiarity in its meteoric explosion of ideas, tamed by haunting lyrical strands inspired by the composer's lifelong obsession with plainsong. Combined with his tendency these days to work with leaner textures, it was an intoxicating cocktail of nostalgia and fresh revelation.”
The Scotsman, November 2009
“It may only have been ten minutes long. But Sir Peter Maxwell Davies's Overture, St Francis of Assisi – newly commissioned by the BBC for Glasgow's Max at 75 celebrations – packed as much dynamite into its short duration as Strauss's Don Juan, Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto or Sibelius's Seventh Symphony, all of which featured in Thursday's BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra (SSO) programme.”
The Scotsman, October 2009
“[T]he orchestral textures are superb – gorgeous string sonorities juxtaposed with trumpets, woodwind or growling timpani […]”
Daily Telegraph, November 2009
Peter Maxwell Davies - The Last Island
“[The Last Island] is as impressive as anything Maxwell Davies has written during recent years.”
Classical Source, October 2009
“It's a haunting piece, full of glassy harmonics and treacherously exposed string-writing that the Nash Ensemble players negotiated superbly. The music threatens to become a conventional introduction and allegro, yet consistently reins itself in so that nothing gets resolved, and the mood of unease remains.”
Guardian, October 2009
Peter Maxwell Davies - Violin Concerto No.2 / Performed by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Daniel Hope, conducted by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies at the BBC Proms
“Maxwell Davies is a master of orchestral technique, eliciting a vast array of colour from the players. […] The breathtaking slow movement was melancholic and deeply expressive, bringing to mind the image of the title’s fiddler on the shore of a remote island, and a plea for the survival of traditional music making on the islands. […] The audience shared my enthusiasm for the work and allowed composer and soloist multiple curtain calls. […] Max has become one of our best known living composers, and it was a wonderful experience to witness such respect and love for a man who is one of our most prolific and outspoken artists.”
Seen and Heard International, September 2009
“Cast in one movement, the new concerto, 20-minutes in duration, is at once accessible and communicative, wearing its modernity lightly. It is scored for a large orchestra and makes great use of pungent brass and tuned percussion; the soloist shines through its ethereal transparency, which is at times mesmerizing. […] It was the concerto that proved the highlight of the evening. […] A sparkly eyed republican turned Establishment figure, the Master of the Queen’s Musick is clearly still at the peak of his powers.”
Musical America, September 2009
“Wave patterns have always suffused Max's music, providing both evocative colour and mathematical conundrums for his composing imagination. Like Sibelius (whose Fifth Symphony was carefully conducted by Garry Walker later in the evening), Max’s music is shaped by natural forms — and this Concerto is no exception.”
Times, September 2009
“Ever the master in terms of balance, Max moulds his musicians around the solo violin. Though indebted to Mendelssohn formally, harmonically the concerto owes more to Alban Berg’s example, written a year after Max was born, with a similar pan-tonal writing for the strings. Truly sumptuous!”
Classical Source, September 2009
Peter Maxwell Davies - Westerlings
“Through this vivid scene-setting it was possible to relate to the composer’s vision of the sight and sound of the sea near his home, described as “a crucible of ever-changing miraculous light”. […] The evocative settings ended with the Lord’s Prayer sung in the now-extinct language of Norn, an Orcadian dialect, and set with sensitivity and understated beauty by Maxwell Davies.”
Classical Source, September 2009
Peter Maxwell Davies - An Orkney Wedding with Sunrise
“Davies is a master story-teller in this vividly detailed tone-painting of a rustic, often raucous, all-night wedding celebration. The bagpipes’ entrance near the end is a soul-stirring touch of genius.”
Gramophone, June 2008
Peter Maxwell Davies - Naxos Quartets
“[T]he Ninth in Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’s cycle of 10 Naxos Quartets is a 36-minute canvas of formidable rigour and accomplishment, positively Beethovenian in its fearless ambition, questing spirit and unremitting concentration. Taking its cue from the Baroque suite but employing Scottish dance forms, the Tenth wears a more reflective demeanour, its emotional kernel comprising a central Adagio flessibile, which boasts some of the most probingly sincere inspiration in the whole series.”
Gramophone, December 2008
“The Maggini Quartet complete the cycle of ten works by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies on the label that commissioned them. The last is deliberately incomplete, ending mid-air after a patchwork of wild and sweaty flings. The Ninth contains raw echoes of the composer's Manchester childhood.
A landmark series.”
Times, December 2008
"The Maggini Quartet and Naxos can be immensely proud of their achievements in bringing this landmark cycle into being. As for its composer, it seems that the wider stage is set to reappear following his recent immersion in chamber music. How the experience gained in working with the medium of the string quartet, the most refined and elevated of all musical formats, will be taken back into the orchestral realm is the next exciting adventure in the career of this most exemplary of creative artists."
Classical Source, November 2008
“Peter Maxwell Davies’s Naxos quartets surely rank as the weightiest and most rewarding of chamber musical statements since Shostakovich.”
Financial Times, September 2008
"The Naxos cycle is a 21st-century landmark."
Times, August 2008
"One of the major achievements in the chamber music of our time... Throughout the five years it has taken him to compose all 10, Davies has been aware of the overarching architecture of the series, likening his task to a novelist who issues a book chapter by chapter in a periodical. What he has produced has been wonderfully varied, from compressed single-movement structures to huge multi-movement spans of music lasting more than 50 minutes, with equally diverse starting points that range from children's games to the lighthouses of Orkney and Shetland.”
Guardian, October 2007
"One can hardly fail to be struck by the fastidious craftsmanship, lucidity of texture and keen sense of proportion and adventure."
Gramophone, July 2007
"Compelling, grippingly concentrated."
BBC Music Magazine, June 2007
Peter Maxwell Davies - Piano Trio
“… the mastery of Maxwell Davies's trio Voyage to Fair Isle was vividly evident. It gave us that instant assurance of being in safe hands, freeing up the mind to enjoy the other qualities of the pieces, which were many.”
Daily Telegraph, January 2003
Peter Maxwell Davies - Antarctic Symphony
“It is a tribute to the integrity of his vision that the composer achieve such a rapturous reception for so intimate and complex a work.”
Independent, May 2001
“… we have here a superior sound architect realizing not only his symphonic concept, but also a culmination of a long life of composition.”
Weser Kurier, May 2001
Peter Maxwell Davies - Piano Concerto
“The work itself was like a Piano-Concerto about-piano-concertos, with echoes of pianistic styles ranging from Bach and Mozart (in the austere beauty of much of the central Adagio) to the spiky dynamism of Bartók and Prokofiev in the outer movements, culminating in a hair-raising coda which out-Rachmaninoffs the ending of the Rachmaninoff Second in its combination of vehement percussion explosions against cascading octave runs from the soloist. Despite the hints of other composers' styles in this substantial 35-minute work, the new Piano Concerto speaks with Max's unmistakable voice; the Scotch-snap rhythms which seem to permeate all his recent output, the piercing brass trills, comic trombone glissandi and ear-catching percussion writing all bear the hallmarks of their composer as his most characteristic.”
Tempo Magazine, November 1997
Peter Maxwell Davies - Mavis in Las Vegas
“Maxwell Davies writes with great musical and orchestrational ingenuity; he doesn't compromise his standards when writing light music. The piece is easy to follow, and often deliciously witty, as when Liberace takes flight. It is also a complex but genuine tribute to tackiness, a quality it neither overvalues nor underrates.”
The Boston Globe, March 1997
Peter Maxwell Davies - Strathclyde Concerti
“An extraordinary composition.”
Glasgow Herald, November 1996
“A work which tests the technique of its soloists to the full, and which is a compelling, beautifully coloured struggle for supremacy and reconciliation.”
Times, January 1990
Peter Maxwell Davies - A Spell for Green Corn: The MacDonald Dances
“One of the loveliest, most satisfying violin concertos of the twentieth century at the very least.”
Wiener Zeitung, September 1994
Peter Maxwell Davies - An Orkney Wedding, with Sunrise
“This piece of unashamed programme music parodies Scottish strathspeys and reels in a hilarious picture of a boozy, rustic knees-up, the band finally collapsing into alcoholic oblivion. The sun rises in th shape of the Highland bagpipes, the player advancing ceremoniously through the hallcrowning the work with a gesture of heartfelt rhetoric. It brought the house down.”
Independent, May 1985
Peter Maxwell Davies - The Martyrdom of St Magnus
“My experience of this superb piece has been intensified by gratitude that, even in our materialist age, artists can still find the means to create works which disturb our complacency, console our hearts and lay bare with compassionate clarity the deeper spiritual patterns which the conflicts and passions of daily life obscure. For admirers of the music of Peter Maxwell Davies, and for those interested in serious new opera and music-theatre works, this disc is a necessity. For others, I will only say that I have found listening to this work both a disturbing and a healing experience. The painful harshness of its subject (and of some of its music) seems to me no more than an accurate reflection of the world we see around us each day, and like all great art, The Martyrdom of St. Magnus ultimately seeks to reconcile us to our state of human imperfection, even as it challenges us to work to bring the actions of our daily lives into closer harmony with the inner blueprint of the Divine Image that each of us carries."
Fanfare, 1977
Peter Maxwell Davies - Eight Songs for a Mad King
“One of this composer's finest and most moving achievements.”
Daily Telegraph, April 1969
Peter Maxwell Davies - Worldes Blis
“Maxwell Davies's score, played with heroic musicality by the RPO, has an organic concentration that is unsurpassed in his output. It is superbly integrated and profoundly affecting.”
Gramophone, 1969