Universally acknowledged as one of the foremost composers of our time, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies has made a significant contribution to musical history through his wide-ranging and prolific output.
He lives in the Orkney Islands off the north coast of Scotland, where he writes most of his music. In a worklist that spans more than five decades, he has written across a broad range of styles, yet his music always communicates directly and powerfully, whether in his profoundly argued symphonic works, his music-theatre works or witty light orchestral works.
Maxwell Davies’ major dramatic works include the operas Taverner, Resurrection, The Lighthouse and The Doctor of Myddfai; full-length ballets Salome and Caroline Mathilde, and music-theatre works Eight Songs for a Mad King and Miss Donnithorne's Maggot. His huge output of orchestral work comprises eight symphonies - hailed by The Times as “the most important symphonic cycle since Shostakovich” – as well as numerous concerti and light orchestral works including An Orkney Wedding, with Sunrise and Mavis in Las Vegas, and five large-scale works for chorus including the oratorio Job. His most recent series is the landmark cycle of ten string quartets, the Naxos Quartets, described in the Financial Times as “one of the most impressive musical statements of our time”.
Also internationally active as a conductor, Maxwell Davies has held the position of Composer/Conductor with both the Royal Philharmonic and BBC Philharmonic Orchestras. He has guest-conducted orchestras including the Cleveland Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Russian National Orchestra, Oslo Philharmonic and Philharmonia Orchestra. He retains close links with the St. Magnus Festival, Orkney’s annual arts festival which he founded in 1977, and is Composer Laureate of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. Maxwell Davies was knighted in 1987 and appointed Master of the Queen's Music in 2004, in which role he seeks to raise the profile of music in Great Britain, as well as writing many works for Her Majesty the Queen and for royal occasions.
As part of his 75th birthday celebrations in 2009, Maxwell Davies has written a violin concerto for the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and Daniel Hope. He conducts the world premiere of this work in Leipzig, followed by the UK premiere at the BBC Proms with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, as part of a day-long celebration of his music at the Royal Albert Hall. His music is also the focus of a weekend at the Southbank Centre, with the first presentation of the complete Naxos Quartet cycle by the Park Lane Group, followed by a further fortnight of events in devoted to his music in Glasgow. In addition to performances by the Scottich Chamber Orchestra, Hebrides Ensemble, Scottish Ensemble, and students from the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra give the world premiere of a new work by Maxwell Davies - Overture, St. Francis of Assisi – under Ilan Volkov, and later perform his seminal opera Taverner, conducted by Martyn Brabbins.
Other recent and upcoming commissions include an orchestral work on the theme of climate change for the Camerata Salzburg, a piano concerto for the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and Angela Hewitt, and an opera for the Royal Academy of Music and Juilliard School of Music. As a conductor, Maxwell Davies has worked recently with the Leipzig Gewandhaus and Hamburg Philharmonic, and this season his conducting engagements include the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Camerata Salzburg, Royal Flemish Philharmonic and Netherlands Radio Chamber Philharmonic.
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Sir Peter Maxwell Davies is represented by Intermusica. September 2009 / 571 words. Not to be altered without permission. Please destroy all previous biographical material.
Sea Orpheus - world premiere performance 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.”
New York Times, February 2010
Miss Donnithorne’s Maggot - performed by Gemini at 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”.”
The Times, January 2010
Taverner - released on NMC Records with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and 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.”
The 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.”
The Times, November 2009
Taverner – performed by the BBC SSO 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.”
The 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, November 2009
Fourth Symphony – 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.”
The Times, November 2009
“[L]ike 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
Overture, St Francis of Assisi – performed by the BBC SSO 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 […]”
The Telegraph, November 2009
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 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.”
The Guardian, October 2009
Violin Concerto No.2 - performed by the RPO and Sir Peter Maxwell Davies with Daniel Hope
“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.”
The 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
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
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
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.”
The 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."
The 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.”
The 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
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.'”
The 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
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
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
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.”
The Times, January 1990
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
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.”
The Independent, May 1985
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
Eight Songs for a Mad King
“One of this composer's finest and most moving achievements.”
Daily Telegraph, April 1969
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.”
The Gramophone, 1969
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.”
The Daily Telegraph, January 2003