The solo group consists of a sextet of the woodwind instruments which are normally doubled with more regular members of the orchestra: these six strangers now brought to the fore are piccolo alto flute cor anglais clarinet inEb bass clarinet in Bb and contrabassoon. They make a motley group diverse in colour as in register and one of the tasks of the piece sets itself is to have them blend and cohere both together as an ensemble and in partnershipwith the string orchestra (which itself is used with unusual variety and subtlety). Another evident task of the work is to provide fine solos for each member of the woodwind sextet: bright dances for the piccolo recitativesfor the alto flute a stoical song from the contrabassoon in the extreme bass. The work is cast as a single movement which begins in the composer's first-movement style of rapid regeneration. This is interrupted by slowinterventions including one for divided strings which gives rise to a sextuple cadenza for the soloists. Out of this comes a slow movement or sequence of short slow movements followed by a dancing finale with its own slowepisodes. Altogether this is music of songs and dances heavily tinged with Scottish rhythms and tonalities: one might think of a magic bagpipe having six chanters and a drone of variegated string texture.

Third Part Of The Orchestral Triptych Triduum-Symphony: ‘Vigil’ (1997) is the last of three interrelated works forming Triduum commissioned by the London Symphony Orchestra the other works being The World’s Ransoming for cor anglais and orchestra and the Cello Concerto (both 1996). All three relate to the historical events and religious liturgies of the Easter Triduum namely Maundy Thursday Good Friday and the Easter Vigil. The symphony’s first movement ‘Light’ deals with the promise of a glimmer of light in the darkness. The central movement ‘Tuba insonet salutaris’ (Sound the trumpet of salvation) is based on the Exsultet melody sung at the Easter Vigil described by Mozart as probably the mostbeautiful ever written. The final movement ‘Water’ opens savagely but subsides towards the presentation of two conflicting principal materials a wild ecstatic dance followed by a slower more mysterious texture leading to a climax and a luminous floating close.

This work written by Maxwell Davies in 1983 for chamber orchestra was commissioned to celebrate the quartercentenary of Edinburgh University. The first performance was given by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra conducted by EdwardHarper in October 1983. Duration c. 29mins.This work was thought through in outline following a visit to the ruined pre-Reformation church of Hoy in Orkney on a fine Spring afternoon after Maxwell Davies had played theharmonium for the tiny congregation in its large bleak Victorian replacement. The old church was surrounded by the graves of centuries the more recent ones with familiar names largely of people who lived in houses now ruinous crofters fishermen clerics sea-captains. Next to it stood the chief farmhouse the Bu going back to Viking times. He thought of the lives and deaths encompassed there expressed through hundreds of years of music in thechurch and in the big barn of the farm.The plainsongs ‘Dies Irae’ and ‘Victimae Paschali Laudes’ are used throughout the work the first concerning the Day of Judgement from the Mass for the Dead the second particular toEaster Sunday and the Resurrection. These are subject to constant transformation the intervallic contour slowly changes from one into the other and their notes are made to dance through Renaissance astrological ‘magic square’patterns.The orchestra consists of double woodwind two horns two trumpets and strings.