Pickaquoy Centre, Kirkwall, Wednesday 23 June 2004

WHEN THE Kirkwall City Philharmonic Pipe Band came “gatecrashing” into the Pickaquoy Centre at the end of Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’s 70th Birthday Concert last Wednesday, they brought more than a gift of four fine tunes for the great man. Sir Peter’s Birthday Suit(e) was a rousing, emphatic, heartfelt confirmation that the Festival and all that it stands for now really matters to Orkney.

It matters for all sorts of reasons: sheer quality of performances, community involvement, tourism of course, education, tradition, responsiveness, prestige, pride that this small place does something so big so well. After 27 years of sometimes fraught negotiation, the final judgement was delivered in pipes and drums, brave pleated kilts and Andy Cant’s near-limbo-dance conducting. And big licks in the local press as well, not to mention solid financial support from OIC.

It had been a marvellous concert. The orchestra-in-residence, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, were clearly in a mood to enjoy themselves, and they played brilliantly under Max’s direction, as they had done, under James Grossmith or Ilan Volkov, throughout their time here.

Sir Peter Maxwell Davies (© John Batten)

Max’s home island was represented in the evening’s programme by the Sanday Fiddle Club. Eighteen-strong, they joined the orchestra for the first piece, Six Sanday Tunes, a contrasting set that took us pleasantly around a variety of places and sights on the island. A good start.

A Reel of Seven Fishermen was next. This was a tour-de-force of dramatic and colourful orchestration, inspired both by George Mackay Brown’s poem, and by Max’s own experience of the freakishness and charity of the sea. We were there too, roiling around under the waves amid harp and glockenspiel noises, the strings’ vibrato and blasting trombones, and mightily uplifted when the clarinet made its return in the third movement, lifted us into our own element, renewed.

Pianist Jean-Phillipe Collard was one of the principal soloists appearing in the Festival this year. Violinist Ilya Gringolts was the other – not to overlook viola-player Lawrence Power, also appearing with the excellent Nash Ensemble, who gave an heroically charged performance with the SSO in Harold in Italy.

Just as Gringolts, with Volkov and the SSO, had given a thrilling account of Elgar’s B minor Concerto on the Monday night – a deeply sympathetic collaboration between all parties – so, for the third part of Max’s Birthday Concert, Collard played Mozart’s Piano Concerto in A K488 fully focused on the orchestra, playing this tune-filled masterpiece as though to some extent part of a chamber group.

It was a more physically intense piano sound than might suit everyone, but a fully committed performance, down to the growls – a reprise from his Sunday afternoon promenade through Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. Collard is tall and strong: a superb pianist, and no showman.

The final item on the programme could only be Max’s An Orkney Wedding with Sunrise. By this time the hall was as warm as a wedding dance and the band were fully in the mood for something extra special, swaying along and letting rip and slip with a most eloquent jollity. Max himself was dancing, more or less, on the podium. It was all rude delight and smiling till the sun came up – in the person of piper Iain McDonald, slow-marching on as only a Highland sun can slow-march – and gave his bright blessing on the night’s events.

And then, as we all knew, but Max did not, the World Premiere Performance of Sir Peter’s Birthday Suit(e): 70 Max, Farewell to Stromness, and The Reel PMD – all by or arranged by Andy Cant – and of course, Happy Birthday, and we all joined in with that. A giant birthday card, speeches, gifts. Max will be having birthday parties all over the world until next April, he said, but this one, “in my own community” would be the most important to him of all. “What a wonderful surprise, I say again.”

A recording of the Birthday Concert will be broadcast on Radio 3 on 1 July 2004 at 7.30pm.

© Alistair Peebles, 2004