Orkney, 20-25 June 2008

John McMunn as Magnus in The Martyrdom of St Magnus - photo by Roberto Cavieres

SOME PEOPLE do everything at the Festival, from poetry to orchestras and late night shindigs (occasionally round the standing stones). Some pick and choose, pacing themselves, and some are heavily involved in one thing – the community play, for instance – but don’t go to anything else at all.

Love it or not, the Festival brings in hordes of visitors, pots of money to the local economy, and an absolutely dizzy-making amount of culture, mostly in the form of music.

It not only survives, but thrives on its individuality. This is no ‘circuit’ festival, where if you miss the stars you can catch them at the next one. And there are a few central ingredients that make it special.

Founder Peter Maxwell Davies (Max) is one, the quietly inspired programming and direction of Glenys Hughes at the helm is another – and the place itself, including the rosily glowing cathedral, of course, is a third. Not least, the local input is essential and excellent.

The Festival makes many demands on the time, goodwill and creativity of local enthusiasts. People give performers beds and meals; the technical crew are voluntary and second to none; local talent is employed to perform, write, direct, compose, introduce, review, chauffeur…. And even the most committed draw a deep breath when the festival opening comes round again, seemingly only five minutes after the last one.

But then, when it gets going, you get sucked in again. And most admit that it’s worth it; that we should be proud to have it, and make sure we keep it. For it’s more fragile than it appears. Like everything else arts-related, funding is not secure and has to be re-applied for every time. Highly successful and nationally important offshoots, such as the conductors’ and composers’ courses, have managed to keep going, but nothing is guaranteed.

Despite all this, the festival presents itself confidently, professionally and always ambitiously. This year there were two main strands: an Indian one, and the story of St Rognvald, the Viking earl who founded St Magnus Cathedral in honour of his martyred uncle. (It’s the 850th anniversary of Rognvald’s death, which has prompted something of a ‘Rogn-fest’ this year in Orkney generally, although he is not as well-known as his famous uncle.)

This year, because of the huge number of events, the Festival began before it officially opened. The big show-starter was Riders of Sea Horses, a multi-layered concoction of dance, music and narrative, which re-constructed the building of the Cathedral inside the Cathedral itself.

A great spectacle and an enormous undertaking for director Chris Giles, it involved groups of children from Westray, St Andrews, Firth and Papdale primary schools, re-enacting scenes from Rognvald’s life as a pillaging and crusading earl who had chestnut locks and wrote poetry, and gradually putting together the simple and elegant Cathedral set, made by Dave Grieve.

Choreographed by Ali Gunn, the children were magnificent and moving as soldiers, French maidens, builders, and the River Jordan itself. The scenes were narrated by two time-travelling Viking wifies, who were played with great panache by Maggie Drever and Stella Harcus, both from Westray.

The Friday evening concert introduced the Festival’s Indian strand with a bang. Featuring this year’s resident Scottish Chamber Orchestra, the Picky Centre was jam-packed to hear the world premiere of Amjad Ali Khan’s first major orchestral work Samagam, played on the sarod, on which he is world-renowned virtuoso.

The anticipation built as we listened to Bach, Vivaldi and an engaging Tippett piece, played with flair and passion by various groups of SCO members. The cello soloist in the Vivaldi was the very stylish David Watkin. The audience was well warmed up for the arrival of Khan, in flowing russet-orange robe, for his performance.

And how delicious it was; the music passed back and forth between Khan and the orchestra, full of improvisation within a tightly-bound direction, and always building to a climax that made the hairs on the neck stand up. The warmth between soloist, conductor David Murphy and orchestra was obvious, and the maestro graciousness itself. The amazing tabla player Satyajit Talwalkar added a whole other dimension. They deserved the standing ovation at the end.

The resident poet was rising star Daljit Nagra, a Londoner with Punjabi roots, whose collection Look We Have Coming to Dover! has won many awards since its publication last year. Nagra’s poetry begs to be read aloud and he engaged his audience at the Pier Arts Centre with a fast and furious mix of dramatic monologue, and brightly-coloured and almost scented imagery.

His poetry so far deals mainly with the inevitable conflicts of a multi-cultural society, and poignantly with the optimism shown by his parents’ generation arriving in Britain, often followed by the grim reality of squashed housing, racism and, more recently, hostility and suspicion on public transport. Nagra reads with easy, comfortable grace – the Punjabi words interspersed with the English well placed and always adding a layer.

No festival is the same without a Peter Maxwell Davies premiere, and this year there were two. The first, in Stromness Town Hall, was a violin sonata, played mesmerizingly by Ilya Gringolts, accompanied by Aleksander Madzar on the piano (wearing a worn-looking jersey, after a rather exciting journey to Orkney, during which his luggage was lost.).

It was a wide-ranging muscular piece, full of variety and energy, the setting an imaginary, traffic-free walk through Rome. This substantial piece was a show-stopper, in amongst some beautifully played Beethoven and Schumann.

The second premiere came on Monday, during an excellent and well-programmed concert in the cathedral from the Hebrides Ensemble. Messiaen’s Le Merle Noir, an ecstatic bird-song piece was a joy, and Mahler’s cycle of songs, Kindertotenlieder, sung hauntingly by Louise Mott. And the Max piece for string trio was unmistakable and gutsy, with changes of mood and reference seamless, especially evocations of Orcadian folk music. The journey was clear and strongly defined. Poignantly, the piece was dedicated to, Karen Aim, the young Orcadian woman murdered in New Zealand earlier this year.

Continuing the Rognvald celebration, the Johnsmas Foy this year was a tight and witty romp through the saint’s life. Using a minimal cast of multi-talented actors, singers, musicians and narrators, and including a special Icelandic guest, Vesteinn Olason, the question of whether or not Rognvald was a saint, was posed.

At the end, the audience had to decide, and concluded he most definitely wasn’t – despite being a likeable enough chap. Tom Muir was engaging as Rognvald, and Aimee Leonard excellent as the beautiful Ermingerd, whom Rognvald loves, but ultimately resists. Directed by Penny Aberdein, this was a great piece of entertainment from this veteran festival director of community extravaganzas.

The festival proper ended with two vastly different performances: The Great Rock n’ Roll Swindle in the Picky Centre, and a revival of Maxwell Davies’s The Martyrdom of St Magnus in the Cathedral. The ‘Swindle’ involved professional band Music at the Brewhouse, who worked with visiting composers Stephen Deazley and David Knotts, and Orkney composer Gemma McGregor, throughout a hugely enjoyable and varied programme.

The concert was the culmination of weeks of creativity from the acts, who worked with visiting composers Stephen Deazley and David Knotts and Orkney composer Gemma McGregor to write and orchestrate two songs each. A great opportunity for the young people involved, and they rose to it. From the folky lyricism of Midas Touch and Never Mind the Banjos to belting blues rockers Trunk Road Defect, from the Dylanesque poetry of Jamie Hall, to folk-inspired Lucy Hague and powerful diva Katie Thomas, they were awesome.

The Martyrdom of St Magnus, commissioned by the BBC, opened the very first St Magnus Festival in 1977. This short opera, based on part of the novel Magnus by George Mackay Brown, was stylishly performed by members of the Hebrides Ensemble (who were very busy throughout this festival) in a packed and hushed Cathedral.

The staging was minimalistic, the costumes and masks bold and imaginative, the lighting used to good effect on the Cathedral stone. The singing was demanding for the performers and beautifully sustained – a particularly effective section involving members of the cast as reporters, sweeping around the Cathedral with torches. The death of Magnus, shown by his garment being raised into the air as if by magic, was particularly moving and effective.

And that wasn’t quite it. The following weekend there was the ‘fringe’ Magfest performance, Faring, a spectacular circus-style outdoors show, involving acrobats running up the Cathedral walls, a gaiety engine, pipe band, jarl squad, a patriotic sheep and a man dressed as a prawn, complete with three-piece suit, cigarette and cocktail. A mesmerising show in mercifully balmy weather after the horrendous wind and rain all through the preceding week.

This is just a taster of this year’s offering. All in all, book-ended by the saints, and travelling via India, this year’s festival, in inverse proportion to the weather, was glorious.

© Pamela Beasant, 2008

Links

• St Magnus Festival