# Sir Peter Maxwell Davies



## Morimur

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 or witty light orchestral works. _-- maxopus.com_


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## Morimur

*Peter Maxwell Davies at 80*

*Peter Maxwell Davies at 80: 'The music knows things that I don't'*
_Last year Peter Maxwell Davies was given six weeks to live. Despite 'absolutely revolting' chemotherapy and a blood clot that almost killed him, he went on to complete his 10th Symphony, and now he's about to celebrate his 80th birthday._

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/aug/19/peter-maxwell-davies-at-80-interview


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## joen_cph

The _Bassoon Concerto_ (1993) from the Strathclyde cycle is definitely the work I enjoy most by him - a quite autumnal and lively piece:


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## brotagonist

I still haven't replaced any of his albums on CD, so I have completely forgotten what his music sounds like  I know that I used to like it (while he wasn't my favourite composer, I liked him enough to have collected about a half dozen albums on LP).


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## Kilgore Trout

While famous in his own country, he doesn't seem to be much liked outside of England. I love his music, but I get why people might reject it : his long, overly dense and labyrinthic instrumental writing, kind of like Sibelius meets Bax meets Schönberg with medieval modes and light music thrown in there, can seem to meander too much at times. But I like this aspect of his music : his symphony 1 is like being under ocean waters, crushed by the waves and the cold current. There is also a strong ritualistic dimension to his music, something coming from old ages - it's a black and grey, stormy and liquid music. It's strongly evokative, even in his most abstract music. He's obviously a composer of the sea.

Right now, my favorite works are :
- Worldes Blis
- St Thomas Wake 
- Eight Songs for a Mad King : these three pieces were written the same year (1969), and pretty much sum up his whole work : the big labyrinthic medieval piece, the crazy massive post-serialist work with a bunch of light music, the theatrical stuff.
- Taverner and the lighthouse, the latter being a good way to enter this music
- Westerlings, Solstice of light... : PMD is a master of choral writing. 
- Symphony 1, 5, 6 and 10 : the sixth one is a symphonic masterpiece, the shorter fifth is the most accessible.
- Ressurection : crazy opera, which mix pure atonality with pop music and soap parodies.
- A spell for green corn : The MacDonald Dances, Cross lane fair...
- Strathclyde Concerto 2

Huh, that is already too much, but he wrote a lot.

I like this quote from the article posted above :
“I realise when I look at these people like Tom Adès or Jimmy MacMillan that they’re far cleverer and more brilliant than I could ever be, as conductors and in many other ways – but I kept my corner. And nobody else could write the music that I write.”

I agree to some extent : his music is not brilliant, it's not clever, it often sounds laborious, but this is also part of its uniqueness, it's not individualistic "urban" music, it's music coming from some dark faraway lands.

PS : maybe we should post this to the Composer Guestbooks forum ?


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## elgar's ghost

The Lighthouse is a fine opera and one of PMD's celebrated works, and I would recommend it to those unfamiliar with Max's vocal output but appreciate the tense atmospherics of works such as Britten's Turn of the Screw.


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## Morimur

Kilgore Trout said:


> PS : maybe we should post this to the Composer Guestbooks forum?


Agree. I posted in the wrong section.

Davies is a great composer and a bit of an anomaly in this day and age. His work reminds me of Britten's without the emotional naiveté and playfulness. He's a fairly new discovery for me but I sure love what I am hearing. His numerous massive works are something to behold.


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## Headphone Hermit

Kilgore Trout said:


> his symphony 1 is like being under ocean waters, crushed by the waves and the cold current. There is also a strong ritualistic dimension to his music, something coming from old ages - it's a black and grey, stormy and liquid music. It's strongly evokative, even in his most abstract music. He's obviously a composer of the sea.
> 
> Huh, that is already too much, but he wrote a lot.


I've tried many times, but can't get in. I'd very much like to hear more of this type of comment Kilgore Trout (please) - I am sure that similar comments would help me to look for the hooks that will grab me and open up some of this body of work to me


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## Kilgore Trout

What pieces did you try, to see what you're starting from ?


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## Headphone Hermit

_An Orkney Wedding with Sunrise
Caroline Mathilde: Concert Suite from Act I of the Ballet
Farewell to Stromness
Le Jongleur de Notre Dame
Ojai Festival Overture
Piano Concerto
Piccolo Concerto
Plainchant
Runes from a Holy Island
Sir Charles: His Pavan
St Thomas Wake
String Quartet
Symphony No 1
Symphony No 6
The Bairns of Brugh
The Turn of the Tide
Threnody on a Plainsong for Michael Vyner
Time and the Raven
Vesalii Icones
Worldes Bliss_

Help with any of these would be very much appreciated


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## Kilgore Trout

If you like nothing in there, I'm not sure I can be of any help!


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## Morimur

Headphone Hermit said:


> _An Orkney Wedding with Sunrise
> Caroline Mathilde: Concert Suite from Act I of the Ballet
> Farewell to Stromness
> Le Jongleur de Notre Dame
> Ojai Festival Overture
> Piano Concerto
> Piccolo Concerto
> Plainchant
> Runes from a Holy Island
> Sir Charles: His Pavan
> St Thomas Wake
> String Quartet
> Symphony No 1
> Symphony No 6
> The Bairns of Brugh
> The Turn of the Tide
> Threnody on a Plainsong for Michael Vyner
> Time and the Raven
> Vesalii Icones
> Worldes Bliss_
> 
> Help with any of these would be very much appreciated


Keep at it. It's well worth it.


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## Krummhorn

Kilgore Trout said:


> . . . PS : maybe we should post this to the Composer Guestbooks forum ?





Lope de Aguirre said:


> Agree. I posted in the wrong section . . .


Done as requested


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## Guest

No one has mentioned his very powerful Piano Sonata (1981). It isn't recorded often due to its ferocious difficulty and complexity, but I like very much.


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## Morimur

Composer's website: http://www.maxopus.com/



> *Sir Peter Maxwell Davies*, CH, CBE (born 8 September 1934) is an English composer and conductor. In 2004 he was made Master of the Queen's Music.
> 
> Davies was born in Salford, Lancashire, the son of Thomas and Hilda Davies. At age four, after being taken to a performance of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Gondoliers, he told his parents that he was going to be a composer. He took piano lessons and composed from an early age. As a 14-year-old, he submitted a composition called "Blue Ice" to BBC Children's Hour in Manchester. BBC producer Trevor Hill showed it to resident singer and entertainer Violet Carson, who said, "He's either quite brilliant or mad". Conductor Charles Groves nodded his approval and said, "I'd get him in". Davies' rise to fame began under the careful mentorship of Hill, who made him the programme's resident composer and introduced him to various professional musicians both in the UK and Germany. After attending Leigh Boys Grammar School, Davies studied at the University of Manchester and at the Royal Manchester College of Music (amalgamated into the Royal Northern College of Music in 1973), where his fellow students included Harrison Birtwistle, Alexander Goehr, Elgar Howarth and John Ogdon. Together they formed New Music Manchester, a group committed to contemporary music. After graduating in 1956, he studied on an Italian government scholarship for a year with Goffredo Petrassi in Rome.
> 
> In 1959, Davies became Director of Music at Cirencester Grammar School. He left in 1962 after securing a Harkness Fellowship at Princeton University (with the help of Aaron Copland and Benjamin Britten); there he studied with Roger Sessions, Milton Babbitt and Earl Kim. He then moved to Australia, where he was Composer in Residence at the Elder Conservatorium of Music, University of Adelaide from 1965-66.
> 
> -Wikipedia


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## Guest

Phew, for a moment there I thought I was going to read some bad news about our belovèd Max !!


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## Guest

Trouble is (and a fact of life), PMD (like Boulez) is really advanced in years and in failing health. We really should honour them now by listening to works before they ... move on.


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## Mandryka

Morimur said:


> Composer's website: http://www.maxopus.com/


If you like that style then I would check the Vesali Icones. If anyone knows how I can hear the recording by Fires of London then please let me know -- short of buying the LP (It appeared briefly on CD)

Otherwise there are the symphonies. I put a recording of one of them conducted by Edward Downes on symphonyshare which is good (the 3th) There's also a good recording of the 5th by Martin Brabbins knocking around on the internet.

I've never explored the naxos quartets. They don't have a good reputation -- but I've not judged for myself.


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## Kilgore Trout

You already made a thread about him :

http://www.talkclassical.com/33724-sir-peter-maxwell-davies.html


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## Morimur

Kilgore Trout said:


> You already made a thread about him :
> 
> http://www.talkclassical.com/33724-sir-peter-maxwell-davies.html


Dammit. Honest mistake. I had forgotten about it and did not see his name on the composers' list. Apologies, mods.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde

Okay that's actually quite funny. :lol:

I've heard a little bit of PMD's music, would have to listen to more before he knocks off, but I've liked what I've heard.


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## 20centrfuge

I have recently been discovering this wonderful composer. My introduction has been by way of his amazing trumpet concerto. I am really loving this piece and based on what I have heard, I think this composer is undervalued in the world today.

Anyway, I would like to explore more of his music. What would you suggest starting with? I have been thinking to listen to Symphony 1, 3. What else? Any specific recordings that you like?

Thanks so much!


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## 20centrfuge

Max is new to me, but is my favorite composer of the moment. I can't seem to get enough of his music. It all started when I started listening to his trumpet concerto (I'm a trumpeter). It took me about 15 times listening to it to "get it" - to get a sense of what the music was doing and and what he was saying through the music.

From there I have grown to really like Strathclyde 9 a lot. I haven't yet broken through on his symphonies. They seem very dense and I wonder if there might be some sensory overload going on for me.

Nevertheless, I am soooo excited to be discovering this composer. His use of dissonance is fantastic, and though, as mentioned before, his music can seem to wander, I enjoy the sense of a journey that it gives me.

Lastly, I find it a shame that this composer isn't more celebrated. He is quickly becoming one of my favorites of all time. 

Anyhoo, it is nice to be able to converse with other people who appreciate Max. If you have any suggestions for listening, recordings, or anything else, I am open to your comments.

Thanks.


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## Birdsong88

This is definitely a composer I would like to try out. I really like musical themes based on the sea. Nowhere to begin? Some suggestions in each genre would be helpful.


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## elgar's ghost

If you want to listen to his output centred around the Orkney Islands then I'd suggest you begin with this:

















This a Naxos re-issue of an album previously issued on Collins:


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## PeterFromLA

Sadly, his leukemia has returned. Despite the devastating news, he remains active.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/11925335/Sir-Peter-Maxwell-Davies-I-will-write-as-much-as-possible-as-I-battle-cancer-again.html


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## elgar's ghost

^
^

I'm sorry to hear about that. 

I'm glad that so much of his work on the now-defunct Collins label is being given a second wind by Naxos - it would be nicer still if his out-of-print releases on the UK label similarly found a way to be made available again, especially as the works featured on them - The Martyrdom of St. Magnus, Miss Donnithorne's Maggot and Eight Songs for a Mad King - are central to his theatrical output.


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## starthrower

What's the best performance of the first symphony?


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## Kilgore Trout

It's not like there are many available... Rattle's reading is rawer and more aggressive than PMD's, which is softer and more subdued.


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## starthrower

The 10th sounds like a great work. I gave it a listen on YouTube. It's paired with Panufnik's 10th on the LSO Live CD.


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## brotagonist

I really ought to give some of his stuff a listen sometime. I used to have about a half dozen LPs, back then  but I haven't heard any of his music since the late '80s. I just sort of forgot what it sounded like. I know I used to rather like his music, even though he was never a big fave.


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## Kilgore Trout

starthrower said:


> The 10th sounds like a great work. I gave it a listen on YouTube. It's paired with Panufnik's 10th on the LSO Live CD.


The 10th is a strong work, but I prefer the shorter and more original 9th. Overall, I think the best of the symphonies is the 7th, a true masterwork. Sadly, there is no official recording of it (but there is one floating on youtube).


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## starthrower

What's the word on his string quartet cycle? There's an inexpensive 5 disc box on Naxos. I'm looking to pick up more quartet recordings and I'm considering Maxwell and Ferneyhough.


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## Guest

starthrower said:


> What's the word on his string quartet cycle? There's an inexpensive 5 disc box on Naxos. I'm looking to pick up more quartet recordings and I'm considering Maxwell and Ferneyhough.


Get the Ferneyhough first. I think most fans of both composers would make the same suggestion. But Max's quartets ain't bad.


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## starthrower

I like a bit of lyricism and tunefulness to break out amongst all the spikey, edgy sounds, but I don't hear anything in the Ferneyhough quartets. I can't find enough Davies on YouTube to get a feel for his style.


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## brotagonist

I listened to Ferneyhough's Sixth SQ a couple of days ago on YT. As much as I want to like Ferneyhough—and I sort of do—I just haven't managed to get wild about him, not enough to actually buy a recording.

I also listened to MD's Sea Orpheus and Seventh Symphony. The former was interesting enough that I gave it a 'like'; the symphony, on the other hand, I left unchecked. I plan on giving a few more a listen soon.


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## Guest

starthrower said:


> I like a bit of lyricism and tunefulness to break out amongst all the spikey, edgy sounds, but I don't hear anything in the Ferneyhough quartets. I can't find enough Davies on YouTube to get a feel for his style.


Then you may indeed prefer the Maxwell... I guess I'm just saying that, for people that like both Ferneyhough and Maxwell Davies in general, I have heard only positive reviews for Ferneyhough's quartets but relatively mixed reviews for Maxwell Davies.

As far as contemporary masters go, are you acquainted with Rihm's significant quartet cycle? I would also give high praise to the quartets of Peter Ruzicka.


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## starthrower

I want to investigate Rihm eventually. I've been listening to Norgard, and I like his quartets. I might have gone for Ferneyhough if it was one disc, but three discs of his stuff is too much. I haven't heard of Ruzicka, but I'll look into his stuff.


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## Guest

starthrower said:


> I want to investigate Rihm eventually. I've been listening to Norgard, and I like his quartets. *I might have gone for Ferneyhough if it was one disc, but three discs of his stuff is too much.* I haven't heard of Ruzicka, but I'll look into his stuff.


A bit of an adventurous recommendation, but you might try the Donaueschinger Musiktage 2010 box. There are also some quartets on other boxes (2006 and, I think 1998 (?), come to mind). But almost half of the 2010 box is quartets, and it gives you Ferneyhough's 6th quartet with a variety of other works, including quartets by Dillon, Cassidy, Manoury, Adámek, and a quintet by Posadas.... And then you get some genius works including those of Globokar and Haas on the latter 2 discs


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## starthrower

Yeah, NEOS has a lot of cool stuff. I have their Darmstadt Aural Documents box.


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## Kjetil Heggelund

****Peter Maxwell Davies awarded the RPS Gold Medal****

One of classical music’s highest honours, the Royal Philharmonic Society Gold Medal, has been awarded to composer Sir Peter Maxwell Davies. He becomes the 102nd recipient since the medal was founded in 1870 in celebration of the centenary of the birth of Beethoven.

The medal was presented to him at his home in the Orkneys by RPS Council Member, Sally Groves MBE.

How about that??


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## PeterFromLA

Sir Peter passed away this morning. RIP.

http://www.wqxr.org/#!/story/peter-maxwell-davies-pioneering-composer-conductor-dies/


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## Pat Fairlea

PeterFromLA said:


> Sir Peter passed away this morning. RIP.
> 
> http://www.wqxr.org/#!/story/peter-maxwell-davies-pioneering-composer-conductor-dies/


Whether his music appealed to you or not, Max was a tireless advocate for 'classical' music, especially for engaging children. Good bloke.


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## Chatellerault

*Peter Maxwell Davies (1934-2016)*

Sir Peter Maxwell Davies (1934-2016) was an English composer and conductor. In 2004 he was made Master of the Queen's Music. Born in North West England, he has lived in Scotland since the 1970s and was never close, in geography or ideas, to the centres of culture or the avant-garde orthodoxies.

"At Darmstadt [the German home of serialism] I disgraced myself on one or two occasions by getting the giggles in concerts." Instead, he sought a personal musical language, an accommodation between tradition and modernity, authority and inspiration, and he found it by building on the bedrock of medieval plainsong.
(quote from https://www.theguardian.com/music/2004/jun/19/classicalmusicandopera.proms2004 )

In the 1960s and 70s he has borrowed from musical tradition (mostly Middle Ages, Renaissance and Baroque) to create eccentric works full of irony. Missa super L'Homme Armé (1968), starts as a Mass and ends with a foxtrot. Fantasia on a Ground and Two Pavans (1968) uses themes by Henry Purcell (1659-1695) with decorations of "wrong notes". It sounds like an out-of-tune, out-of-tempo baroque orchestra.






Still filled with surprises are the Vesalii Icons for dancer, cello and ensemble (1969). Structured upon the 14 Stations of the Cross, with gloomy sound of the cello contrasting with the sarcastic percussion.

He has composed concertos, symphonies, string quartets... But what I've been listening to the most are his organ works...






The Three Organ Voluntaries (1976) are based on sixteenth-century Scottish church pieces and the composer fills them with strange things when you least expect them. For example the first piece starts all sober and straight, until (at 1:20 in this video) the right hand takes off with a new register, marked "high fluted, clear and bell-like" , with a 20th-century harmony full of "wrong notes".

In the Organ Sonata (1982), each of the four movements develops out of the same fragment of a plainsong for Maundy Thursday, each one bringing new transformations in registers and harmony with growing complexity.

I invite you all to share your love or lack of love for this contemporary composer!


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## Dirge

I investigated a fair portion of Davies' output many years back, but the only work that I revisit on a regular basis is _Ave Maris Stella_ …

Peter Maxwell DAVIES: _Ave Maris Stella_ (1975)
:: The Fires of London [Unicorn-Kanchana]

_Ave Maris Stella_ is a rarefied and mysterious lament meditating on time and death and is composed for a "Pierrot" ensemble of flute, clarinet, violin/viola, cello, piano, and percussion (marimba in this case)-the same ensemble required for Schoenberg's _Pierrot lunaire_. Religious symbolism and Medieval and Renaissance techniques are synthesized in a 20th Century crucible to produce a work "filled with fragile beauty but fraught with danger, a stage for bedeviling demons and consoling angels" (from liner notes). Davies bases the work on his own setting of a Greek text by Roderic Dunnett comprising nine phrases of nine notes. This matrix of phrases undergoes a clever systematic metamorphosis, yielding music that subtly but constantly shifts and evolves as it goes, generating a tense and eerie Medieval religious atmosphere in the process. The music also invokes at various times and to varying degrees the plainchant "Ave Maris Stella" ("Hail, Star of the Sea"), a choice apparently inspired by the composer's experiences on a tiny Orkney farm overlooking the Atlantic Ocean that he'd been restoring around and about the time he was contemplating the work.

It's a quiet work recorded by Unicorn-Kanchana at a very low level, so you have to crank up the volume to get the gist of it. The elusive Fires players lurk in the shadows like lepers on a sunny day, showing themselves only long enough to accomplish their tasks and then disappearing without a trace, save for the telltale finger or toe or tip of the nose. The playing is very savvy and sneaky and hard to pin down, everything's a shade of gray. My only complaint aside from the low level of the recording is that the strings (viola & cello) are balanced too reticently and the clarinet too prominently-whether that's the doing of the ensemble or the recording engineer, I don't know. For a very different take on the work, try the more impetuous and immediate account by the not-so-elusive New York New Music Ensemble [GM], whose members produce crisp, clean, bright timbres and are much more apt to frolic in the light of day than their sinisterly lurking London counterparts. Differences between the ensembles are exemplified by the playing of the marimba players: the New Yorkers' Daniel Druckman is a bold, dynamic player whose conspicuously virtuosic playing is marked by tremendous snap and exactitude; The Fires' Gregory Knowles is a more insidiously seductive and suggestive sort of player whose playing has a subtly shifting shades-of-gray quality about it. So while Druckman immediately grabs you by the collar, Knowles gradually seduces you. (The newish account by Gemini [Metier] is short on poetry and atmosphere and inner tension and long on dull and deliberate marimba playing.)

For more information on _Ave Maris Stella_, see the short review by Arnold Whittall:

https://academic.oup.com/ml/article-abstract/58/3/378-b/1045993/REVIEWS-OF-MUSIC

Davies wrote a companion piece to _Ave Maris Stella_ in 1982, _Image, Reflection, Shadow_, in which cimbalom replaces marimba and the music is more exuberant and extrovert, even dance-like. It has it moments, but it doesn't resonate with me on the whole.


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## elgar's ghost

I've got more of Max's orchestral works than anything else but I also really like some of the challenging vocal works like _Eight Songs for a Mad King_ and _Mrs. Donnithorne's Maggot_ - I can hear a Schoenberg (_Pierrot lunaire_)/Britten (_Curlew River_) influence in works like that.

I'd also namecheck his creepy opera _The Lighthouse_, with its vivid evocation of claustrophobic cabin fever-like tension.

Others I'm keen on are the _Strathclyde Concertos_ series and some of the works inspired by both the remoteness and the rich Celto-Nordic ancient history of his adopted Orkney Islands homeland, such as _The Beltane Fire_ and _Stone Litany_.


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