St Magnus Festival 2004
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| June 2004 Preview: St Magnus Festival 2004 |
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
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I READ WITH interest recently that a new
production of Peer Gynt had opened in Edinburgh, with a cast of six. I
was interested not just because the community production for this year’s St
Magnus Festival is also based on Ibsen’s 1867 “dramatic poem”, but in particular
because the Orkney line-up, including orchestra and off-stage choir, numbers
150.
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 | | Sir Peter Maxwell Davies |
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Size matters, numbers matter. It’s a small island,
it’s a big Festival, it’s the 27th. There are 33 events plus the nightly
Festival Club, and the events on Orkney’s outer isles; we go 20,000 Leagues
Under the Sea, we have Three Peace Sweet and Saltfishforty, The Nils Økland
Trio, Two Fiddlers, Seven Fishermen and Six Sanday
Tunes, to number but a few.
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And we have, to name but a few more, the BBC Scottish
Symphony Orchestra, The Nash Ensemble, the Russian Patriarchate Choir, Grand
Union Scottish Band, the Inchcolm New Music Ensemble, a Pier Arts Centre
exhibition of ceramic work by Richard Slee, and many another fine solo artist
and musician. But the number beating at the Festival’s heart this year is 70,
for that is the age that it will help Sir Peter Maxwell Davies to
celebrate.
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 | | The Nash Ensemble © Keith Saunders |
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It is no news to anyone, of course, that Max – his
music and his values – is as central to the Festival as the Festival itself is
central to the musical life of the county, and it is fitting that the final
performance this year is his own Birthday Concert, featuring the BBC
SSO, pianist Jean-Philippe Collard, and the Sanday Fiddle Club. In addition, a
new work by Max, Seven Skies of Winter, commissioned jointly by the
Festival and the Nash Ensemble, will be premiered by the Nash on Tuesday 22nd in
St Magnus Cathedral, along with birthday tributes by Sally Beamish, Simon Holt,
James MacMillan, Ian McQueen and Alasdair Nicolson.
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“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.
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Music for the opera is by Kenneth Dempster and
libretto by Cengiz Saner: they have worked together before, and both have
participated in previous St Magnus Festivals. 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. Thus the
collaboration between Ken and Cengiz is combined with the equal forces of Mr
McFall’s Chamber and eight local musicians, and combined also with the very
large cast, which includes 80 primary schoolchildren: the threadballs, leaves,
trolls and imps of the piece.
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 | | Kenneth Dempster |
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Other strands from which this Peer Gynt has
been woven include Max and the Festival’s tradition of mixing youngsters and
adult performers, as well as their belief in music theatre. Max’s acknowledged
involvement in encouraging young composers, particularly young Scottish
composers – something that was evident in his annual summer schools on Hoy – is
reflected in the choice of Kenneth Dempster for this
commission.
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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.
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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
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| July 2008 Editorial |
Not this time
Posted by Commissioning Editor, Kenny Mathieson, on
Tue, 01 Jul 2008 09:45:00 GMT |
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