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.
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 Magazine, June 2008
Naxos Quartets
“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, 1 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
These are featured projects related to Sir Peter Maxwell Davies:
Worklist
Worklist - a selection
Highlights from a worklist that spans decades include the iconic Eight Songs for a Mad King, the joyful and entertaining Orkney Wedding with Sunrise, the Naxos String Quartet cycle, the Strathclyde concerto series, five operas, eight symphonies, two ballet scores, a wealth of music for children and young performers and many more works both serious and light-hearted.
Key Dramatic Works
Selected Orchestral...
Projects
"His is a voice that cannot be classified - one that is always his own."
Upcoming Commission Highlights
Conductors who have performed Maxwell Davies's music
Orchestras conducted by Maxwell Davies in recent years
Recent and future conducting programmes
Master of the Queen's Music
St Magnus Festival
Education
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History
History
1934
Born in Salford, UK
1953-1964
Studied in Manchester (fellow students included Harrison Birtwistle, Alexander Goehr, John Ogdon, Elgar Howarth), in Rome with Petrassi, and at Princeton University
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