Familiar Face at the Helm

ALISTAIR PEEBLES looks ahead to a year of temporary change at the St Magnus Festival in 2005.

IT WILL BE no surprise to anyone who knows Glenys Hughes that when she begins a year’s leave from her post as Director of the St Magnus Festival next month, she will be leaving no loose ends behind her. Already a great deal of planning for 2005 has taken place, and an interim Festival Director has been appointed: Ian Ritchie, whom all agree the county is very fortunate to be able to welcome back. “The change will be good for the Festival,” said Glenys.

Her own year out, teaching music in Malawi, will surely be good for the pupils she meets there, and for herself as well, no doubt. Perhaps – since it’s no accident that she has chosen to travel to a country with a rich musical culture – it will lead to new possibilities for festivals to come.

Many will remember Ian Ritchie as one of the Festival’s three Artistic co-Directors, with Glenys and Archie Bevan, in the late 80s and early 90s. At the time, Ian was Managing Director of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, which itself has had a long and fruitful relationship with Orkney (and subsequently became the director of the inaugural Highland Festival).

A lot has changed in the Festival organisation in the last ten years, of course. Not least in that the formerly voluntary directorship is now a full-time post, funded by SAC and OIC, and supported by a paid administrator. The Festival has also been able to acquire a permanent base in Kirkwall, and this year, for the first time, it handled all its own ticket sales: a major step in itself.

Ian Ritchie feels fortunate, too, in having the opportunity to work with the Festival at this stage in its development. Handing over the reins at the annual Stables gathering that follows the final concert, Glenys described him as “an old friend of the Festival”. In his turn, Ian stated that it was “a most enormous privilege, and a joy, to be coming here to take up this post,” adding, “Glenys is not so much a hard act as a wonderful example to follow.”

And he sketched out a programme that showed he intended to make the most of that example. The Festival next year will run from 17-22 June, and the orchestra-in-residence will once again be the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. Garry Walker will conduct all three of their concerts, including Haydn’s Pauken Messe (Mass in Time of War) with the Festival Chorus. Chorus Director will be Iain Campbell. (It was revealed that while he is here, one of Garry Walker’s ambitions, as a keen rock-climber, is to scale the Old Man of Hoy. Whether that’s before or after the concerts isn’t yet known.)

“Ian Ritchie’s experience in recent years as a volunteer worker in Bosnia will be reflected in the 2005 programme”

Pianist Steven Osborne will also be making a welcome return to Orkney, and he will play Shostakovitch’s 1st Piano Concerto . Another major Scottish musician who will feature is the trumpeter John Wallace, Principal of the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. As well as performances within the Festival, John Wallace will also be working closely with brass players in Orkney.

John Kenny, another brass expert, will be playing here as well. His repertoire includes a piece written by Nigel Osborne for the carnyx, an ancient war trumpet, and John will be bringing a bronze replica of that instrument with him to Orkney. Compositions by Nigel Osborne and Sally Beamish will feature both in the orchestral events and in performances by smaller ensembles. A new work by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, Fall of the Leaf , will also be played by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra.

Just as we might anticipate that Glenys’ visit to Malawi may have an impact on future festival content, Ian Ritchie’s experience in recent years as a volunteer worker in Bosnia will be reflected in the 2005 programme. Indeed, conflict and resolution is one of the themes in the festival programme for next year.

Merima Kljuco, from Sarajevo, now based in Amsterdam, is an accordion player who has established herself in recent years as one of Europe’s leading virtuosi on this instrument. She will be coming early to Orkney, and hopes to work with the Orkney Traditional Music Project on a programme of “enrichment and exchange”. One of her performance pieces will be a concerto with the SCO, Seven Words, by the Russian composer Sofia Gubaidulina.

Works by Beethoven and Grieg will also be included in the orchestral programme. In connection with the latter, and with the 2005 Festival’s companion theme of voyaging, a Norwegian exhibition will take place, and the very popular Sails in St Magnus, currently on show in Shetland, will hang again in the Cathedral.

Those huge and colourful sail paintings, illustrating brief texts by George Mackay Brown on the voyage of Earl Rognvald to the Holy Land, were created by Erlend Brown, Dave Jackson, Andrew Parkinson and Mary Scott for installation in the Cathedral in 1993. Ian Ritchie also mentioned a work by Sally Beamish that may be included in the programme, which is based on the great Anglo-Saxon epic, The Seafarer.

“Ian Ritchie emphasised that the core of the festival is the local community, and – again connected with the theme of voyage – he is planning to establish a songwriting project”

One seafarer who is definitely on the list for next year is the bilingual Welsh poet Gwyneth Lewis, who has been working on a book that deals with the sea voyage she made in recent times with her husband, Leighton. The voyage has had to be interrupted, unfortunately, but we hope only temporarily. Another form of exploration that she has written about is space travel. The poems in Zero Gravity (1998), which was shortlisted for the Forward Poetry Prize, were inspired by the work of her cousin, Joe Tanner, an astronaut, who worked on the Hubble space telescope in 1997. Her latest book of poetry is Keeping Mum (Bloodaxe, 2003).

Ian Ritchie emphasised that the core of the festival is the local community, and – again connected with the theme of voyage – he is planning to establish a songwriting project here, the results of which will be performed during the festival, linked together by a progress through the town.

Finally, at least for the moment (there being no news yet concerning the Festival Commissions), a very exciting and unusual area of interest next year will be the progress of a major string quartet competition, to be held in Italy during the period leading up to midsummer. The Premio Paulo Borciano is a competition that attracts huge international interest, and the competition piece for the 2005 prize will be Max’s A Sad Pavan for these Distracted Times. The winning group will be invited to Orkney to give the piece its British premiere during the Festival. They will also receive the Maxwell Davies Prize.

Many bouquets were given out in the Stables that evening, in recognition of the huge contribution the Festival receives from its volunteers. The final gift, and the final words, were in the capable charge of Festival Board Chairman, George Rendall. It was a journal for Glenys, with the Board’s sincere thanks for her year’s work, their best wishes, and a heartfelt, “Haste ye back.”

© Alistair Peebles, 2004