Working Wonders on Orkney

ALISTAIR PEEBLES looks ahead to a busy programme of music and theatre at the 27th St Magnus Festival in Orkney, including a large scale community production of Ibsen’s Peer Gynt
 

“Glenys wanted “a big community project for Max’s 70th birthday”, concentrating on such strands in his thinking as the mix of local and professional artists and performers.”

Ten years ago, the festival finale was Happy Returns: “a birthday retrospective of Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’s Orkney music for children”. That was a stunning account of his contribution over the previous sixteen years – featuring children from sixteen of Orkney’s schools. Performance number 1 this year, the community opera premiere of Peer Gynt, was conceived by Glenys Hughes, Festival Director, as a complement to that. She describes it as a celebration of some key ideas in Max’s work, rather than looking back over the pieces in which those ideas have found expression.
 

Ken describes working on this project as “a great privilege”, saying that Orkney has a terrific reputation in community productions, that he and Cengiz are both very impressed with local musicianship and dramatic skills, and that he is pleased with progress so far. He himself attended the Hoy Music School in 1991, at a pivotal point in his working life, and it helped shape his work and his life ever since. Encouraged by Max and by James MacMillan who was there as well that year, he returned from London to set up base in his native Edinburgh a few months afterwards, and he has pursued a successful freelance career from that time on. Ken, who is also musical director for Peer Gynt, has dedicated the score to Max.

“Once again it looks as though the Festival committee, and all concerned, will have achieved wonders, given Orkney’s location and the limitations that presents.”

If Kenneth Dempster conducts for the rehearsals characteristically on tiptoe, Cengiz Saner’s body language as he moves among the multitudes onstage confirms your impression of him face-to-face. Dynamic, patient, confident and clear in what he wants to achieve, he describes their approach to Peer Gynt in terms of a reappraisal of the relationship in opera between music and libretto.
 

There are stretches for example in which music is altogether absent, except in the language itself, where the words function musically: with repetition, reprises and patterns of leitmotif. Cengiz’s work hitherto has included theatre, films, TV and opera in many parts of the world. He produced Kenneth Dempster’s And the Bridge is Love for Broomhill Opera, and directed Grand Union’s Dr Carnival for the St Magnus Festival in 2002.

Cengiz and Ken, who have made seven trips to Orkney since February, are now in residence here till the Festival itself. The cast will only hear the orchestra from the weekend before the Festival begins, and the musicians similarly will have an intense few days getting familiar with the action. Funding for the project has come largely from the Scottish Arts Council, but Glenys is very grateful that Loganair has sponsored the travel. It will be fascinating to see and hear how it all comes together.

Once again it looks as though the Festival committee, and all concerned, will have achieved wonders, given Orkney’s location and the limitations that presents. Of course they’re building on a truly remarkable record of achievement over the years, hand-in-hand with a truly remarkable island community. It’s a shame in a way that all the work that’s gone into the opera will result in only two performances, plus one for schools. (I suppose that’s where a production in Edinburgh with a cast of six and a choice of theatres wins out.)

Some of the performers have been given the opportunity to travel to Gudbrandsdalen in Norway later this summer, however, to present excerpts from their production at a Peer Gynt symposium there. So like everything else to do with Orkney’s Midsummer Festival, it’s about much more than mere numbers and the actual size of the place, just as Peer Gynt is about much more than how many scrapes he gets into.

As for numbers as regards availability of tickets for the Festival, it seems they’re going down rapidly. It’s still worth trying, however, and the Box Office can be contacted on 01856 871445.

The 27th St Magnus Festival takes place in Orkney from 18-23 June 2004.

© Alistair Peebles, 2004

Related Link

• St Magnus Festival website