St Magnus Preview

1 Apr 2005 in Festival, Music, Orkney

Adventurous Journeys and World-Class Performance

The St Magnus Festival in Orkney is firmly established as a world class arts event. The Arts Journal looks ahead to this year’s festival in June

ORKNEY’S ANNUAL CELEBRATION OF THE ARTS, the St. Magnus Festival, is a unique synthesis of world-class performance, community participation of the highest quality, and the magic of Orkney at midsummer. Founded in 1977 by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, the Festival has become one of Britain’s most highly-regarded and adventurous arts events.

The 2005 Festival, under the direction of Ian Ritchie, is a heady mix of stimulating and inspiring events. Two of the themes running through the programme are sea journeys, which have been a fact of life throughout Orkney’s history; and war, reconciliation and the healing and renewing power of the arts. There is a special focus on Bosnia, where Ian has been deeply involved in musical and humanitarian initiatives for many years (working closely with Nigel Osborne, several examples of whose music will be played during the Festival).

The Festival’s four featured composers are Sofia Gubaidulina, Sally Beamish, Nigel Osborne and, of course, Orkney’s distinguished resident composer Sir Peter Maxwell Davies. Their music will be heard alongside works by Bach, Beethoven, Debussy, Grieg, Haydn – and many more.

New work has always sat at the heart of the St Magnus programme and premières this year include the first UK performance of Maxwell Davies’ quartet, A Sad Paven for these Distracted Times, played by the winners of the Maxwell Davies prize at the Premio Paulo Borciani 2005 who will have arrived hotfoot from Italy.

The world première of Prelude for solo trumpet by Edward McGuire will be given by Mark O’Keeffe during the closing concert, in which one of the Festival’s commissions will also be receiving its first performance: a new work created by John Kenny for Clarence Adoo, who will be making his return to professional performance on a specially developed new instrument, Head-Space, almost ten years after a dreadful road accident confined him to a wheelchair and robbed him of his career as a trumpet player. Clarence will be joined by John Wallace on trumpet and John Kenny on trombone.

Another Festival commission, Slices of Time, inspired by Orkney’s ancient stones and created by Orkney’s renowned traditional musicians, The Wrigley Sisters, working with cellist/composer Kevin McCrae, will receive its world première.

“The Festival has always placed community participation at the heart of its programming, and this year shows that commitment continuing”

Visiting orchestras and ensembles include the Scottish Chamber Orchestra with three concerts conducted by the acclaimed young Scot, Garry Walker. The SCO has enjoyed a close relationship with the Festival over many years, while the Hebrides Ensemble makes its St Magnus debut with two concerts.

In residence throughout the Festival, the Royal Scottish Academy Brass sets forth on several sea journeys of its own, taking music to Orkney’s rural parishes and outer isles, and returning to Kirkwall for the final Fanfare and Flourish which concludes the Festival.

International soloists include two brilliant young artists from different corners of the world, brought together for the first time: accordionist Merima Kljuco from Bosnia and the German/South American cellist Claudio Bohórquez, who will appear together also as soloists with the SCO, and also give a joint recital of Bach, Gubaidulina … and tango!

The Festival also welcomes back two leading Scottish virtuosi who have attained international status: pianist Steven Osborne and trumpeter John Wallace, giving separate recitals and performing together in Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No 1.

As well as playing his trombone, John Kenny brings an altogether more unusual instrument into the limelight: the Carnyx – a replica of a 2000-year-old Pictish war trumpet excavated near Fochabers in Aberdeenshire. Its baleful, ancient sound has moved composers of today, including Nigel Osborne, to write new works incorporating its unique voice. John Kenny will be joined in Forest – River – Ocean by the peerless Nash Ensemble, regular visitors to the St Magnus Festival, this time making a rare if not unique appearance as a string quartet (and also performing quartets by Haydn and Grieg).

The Festival has always placed community participation at the heart of its programming, and this year shows that commitment continuing. The St Magnus Festival Chorus, made up of over a hundred volunteers, has for years provided a central pillar for the Festival’s music programme and this year are preparing Haydn’s Paukenmesse: Mass in Time of War.

Orkney’s schoolchildren have likewise always played key roles in the life of the Festival. This year’s programme opens with a large-scale music-theatre production, Notes in Time of War, created by the children and local composer Gemma McGregor, with songs based on the wartime diaries of children in Bosnia, Iraq, Northern Ireland and Rwanda. More than 100 children from five Orkney primary schools are joined by the Kirkwall Town Band, the Royal Scottish Academy Brass and others in a promenade performance directed by local drama specialist Chris Giles.

“The 2005 film programme represents a new departure for the St Magnus Festival.”

The Festival Poet this year is the acclaimed Welsh writer Gwyneth Lewis, whose own recent sea journeys have inspired her latest work. She will read from her own canon and from the poems of George Mackay Brown. The Festival will also host the official launch of The Collected Poems of George Mackay Brown, the most comprehensive collection of his verse. Olaf Isbister, the Orkney Sailor, a short play by George Mackay Brown, will receive its first Orkney performances, in a production by Orcadian actors and musicians.

Professional drama is provided by one of Scotland’s finest theatre companies, Communicado, who will bring their recent production of Zlata’s Diary, based on the real-life diary of a child trapped in the siege of Sarajevo during the Bosnian conflict in the early 1090s. Zlata Filipovic, the Diary’s best-selling author, will also visit the Festival and talk about her work.

From another age, the epic Anglo-Saxon poem, The Seafarer, will be represented in a newly-published translation and performed in a musical setting by Sally Beamish by the Hebrides Ensemble with Gwyneth Lewis as narrator.

The 2005 film programme represents a new departure for the St Magnus Festival. Eleven short films by the celebrated Orcadian film-maker Margaret Tait (1918-1999) will be shown during two evenings at her erstwhile studio at Orquil in Rendall. Curated by Peter Todd, the screenings have been organised in association with the Pier Arts Centre and LUX. In addition, a series of documentary films relating to the Bosnian war will be shown in the Pickaquoy Centre each morning throughout the Festival, to provide background and context to the Festival programme.

The Festival’s main themes are also reflected in two exhibitions. Bosnian Journey, a moving display of photographs by Richard Welsby, will be on show in the Pickaquoy Centre. Sails in St Magnus, an extraordinary collection of 14 sails painted by Erlend Brown, Dave Jackson, Andrew Parkinson and Mary Scott, will be hung in St Magnus Cathedral. These depict Earl Rognvald of Orkney’s 1151 journey to Jerusalem: “While the crusaders were on their famous voyage, slowly in Orkney the walls of St Magnus Cathedral were rising, the great stone ship that was to bear the people of Orkney through many generations” (George Mackay Brown, 1993).

The Orkney Conducting Course was launched in 2003 and takes place again this year. Directed by Martyn Brabbins, the course enables eight emerging professional conductors to gain hands-on experience through working with orchestras, ensembles and soloists who are present in Orkney for the Festival. Festival visitors have often found the work carried out on these courses fascinating to watch, and they are welcome to drop in on the sessions each day (June 13 – 23).

The Festival takes place mainly in Kirkwall and Stromness, using a variety of locations, most notably the glorious 12th century Cathedral of St. Magnus. Churches elsewhere in the islands host performances, including the beautiful Italian Chapel, built and decorated by Italian POWs during the construction of the Churchill Barriers during World War II. There are regular excursions to events in outlying locations and the Festival on Tour project takes visiting artists and ensembles to Orkney’s outer isles.

The St Magnus Festival runs from Friday, 17 June – Wednesday, 22 June. The full programme is now available in print and on-line at the Festival’s website. Patrons’ booking runs from 8-21 April; general booking (by post and in person) opens Monday 2 May, and by phone from Tuesday 3 May.

Enquiries should be addressed to Ian Ritchie, Festival Director, or Angela Henderson, Administrator, at St Magnus Festival, 60 Victoria Street, Kirkwall, Orkney KW15 1DN. (01856 871445).