It was by no means bland and it did what it set out to do. For all that it ended on an affirmative tonic chord, the music sounded appreciably modern while being relatively easy on the ear.
Shaped like a miniature, single movement choral symphony, it had its dissonances and its rhythmic puzzles, but there was some compensatory harmonic mellowness.
The princpal theme, given out in muscular form by the trumpet at the start, turned out to be susceptible to all sorts of metamorphoses, economically supplying material for the equivalent of a first movement, scherzo, slow movement and finale. It was the closing section that deployed the chorus, singing a text by the Poet Laureate, Andrew Motion, that ticked all the right politcally correct boxes - coastal erosion, the ozone layer, corruption of language - while celebrating the constancy that the Queen represents.
With BBC Symphony Orchestra boosted by the Fanfare Trumpeters of the Scots Guards and the 250 children's voices from various Chapels Royal, schools and youth choirs, the end was aptly rousing.
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 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.
Peter Maxwell Davies’s Naxos Quartets surely rank as the weightiest and most rewarding of chamber musical statements since Shostakovich.
The Naxos cycle is a 21st-century landmark.
Peter Maxwell Davies’ Naxos Quartet no.5 (performed in the presence of the composer himself) whisked us away from an evening at the Carinthischen Sommer to the stormy coast of the Orkney Islands in the North of Great Britain. This complex piece, subtitled ‘Lighthouses of Orkney and the Shetlands’ mirrored the structures and moods of the sea, and the rhythms of the flashing lighthouses.
…an orchestral meditation, which painted internalized sketches and was woven into expressive poems by the brass section… Both pieces proved the high compositional quality of Davies’ work, and had their baptism at the hands of the Camerata Salzburg under Davies’ own inspired conducting.
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.
Ave Maris Stella… is one of his profoundest and most luminous works… Vintage Max indeed.
With the premiere of his 10th and final Naxos String Quartet, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies came to the end of what must surely rank as one of the most impressive musical statements of our time. From the intimate exchanges of four string players Max has drawn a language that contradicts the prevailing notion of music as a medium that needs size and/or volume to make an impact. He has gone back to the classic models, Haydn and Beethoven, and somehow found within himself a creative wellspring that can withstand comparison with theirs. No mean achievement. For those of us who have followed this journey, it has been an immensely rewarding experience.