St. Magnus International Music Festival
The St. Magnus International Festival runs from 22–28th June, with its usual mix of classical music, theatre, dance, poetry, bands, visual art, community participation and new work.
There is plenty to enjoy, including Rachmaninov’s Vespers, Rossini’s Petite Messe Solennelle, a concert that explores ’Songs of Freedom’ and Zoé Martlew’s Review Z. One wonders, however, if the festival has been feeling the pinch just recently. I could only locate one world premiere from an established ‘name’, Kenneth Hesketh’s Inscrizione (derivata) (A Lie to the Dying) on 27th. There is also an entirely worthy education composition project with Kirkwall Grammar School and Glaitness Primary School on 23rd. Little else, or so it seems. What, for example, happened to the composition course this year?
The Holland Festival
Amsterdam’s Holland Festival runs from 7th June–1st July. There are several regional premieres on offer plus the world premiere of Daníel Bjarnason’s We Came in Peace for All Mankind for 12 horns and 12 pianos (as resonance chambers) on 23rd. There is also a special focus on the music of George Benjamin, including performances of his Dance Figures, Sometime Voices and operas Lessons in Love and Violence and Written on Skin.
There is much else besides, much of it very imaginative. The opening day, for example, contains a collaboration between Gerhard Richer the painter and Marcus Schmickler, the composer as well as a performance of Morton Feldman’s Rothko Chapel. On 13th the Heath Quartet perform Beethoven’s string quartet no.11 and Ligeti’s String Quartet No. 2, but under the title The String Quartet’s Guide to Sex and Anxiety and with four actors who ‘reconstruct the melody of melancholy in a staging full of insanity.’ Throughout the festival there is also the chance to spend half an hour listening to Longplayer, a composition for singing bowls that started playing on 31st December 1999 and will not end until the year 2999.
Here’s a video preview of the festival: