Peter Maxwell Davies
With over two hundred published works in every medium which are continually performed all over the world, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies is universally acknowledged as one of the foremost composers of our time. He lives in a croft in a remote valley on the island of Hoy in the Orkneys off the north coast of Scotland where he writes most of his music.
He
has written across the widest gamut of musical genre, and in many styles.
The power to communicate forcefully and directly with his audiences manifests
itself whether it be in his profoundly argued symphonic works, whether
it be in the delightful music-theatre works written to be performed by
non-specialist children or whether it be in his sometimes outrageous witty
light orchestral works. As a critic for the Boston Globe has written:
'The power of the music of Peter Maxwell Davies lies both in its originality
and the connection that it makes - connections with nature, with the continuum
of music's history, with the human psyche.'
His major theatrical works include the operas Taverner, Resurrection, The Lighthouse and The Doctor of Myddfai; the full-length ballets Salome and Caroline Mathilde, and the music-theatre works Eight Songs for a Mad King and Miss Donnithorne's Maggot. His fifty-six orchestral works include fourteen concertos; seven light orchestral works, including An Orkney Wedding, with Sunrise and Mavis in Las Vegas; three large-scale works for chorus, including the oratorio Job; and six symphonies, hailed by The Times as being 'the most important symphonic cycle since Shostakovich'.
He is the Associate Conductor/Composer of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London, the Composer/Conductor of the BBC Philharmonic in Manchester, and the Composer Laureate of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. He guest-conducts major orchestras both in Europe and in the United States. He has thirty-six compact discs entirely devoted to his music, and, as a conductor, he has an exclusive recording contract with Collins Classics. Future commissions include a Concerto for Horn for The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and his Symphonies No. 7 for the BBC Philharmonic and No. 8 (Antarctica) for the Philharmonia Orchestra, as well as the on-going narrative of the fourteen orchestral works entitled Sails in Saint Magnus for the BBC Philharmonic.