Peter Maxwell Davies

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Music Commentary, Personal Journals, Society & Culture, Music

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 25 June 1983

⏱️ 42 minutes

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Summary

Peter Maxwell Davies is not only a prolific composer, he is also Director of Music at Dartington Hall Summer School and Director of the Fires of London, a group specialising in twentieth-century music which he conducts on their many concert tours. Most of his composing is done in the tranquillity and isolation of his home in the Orkneys.

In conversation with Roy Plomley, he talks about the various facets of his life and chooses the eight records he would take to the mythical island.

[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]

Favourite track: Agnes Dei by Byrd Book: Ulysses by James Joyce Luxury: Music manuscript paper and pens

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, I'm Kirstie Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive.
0:05.6	For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.
0:08.6	The program was originally broadcast in 1983, and the presenter was Roy Plumley.
0:13.7	Music As usual, the castaway is introduced by Roy Plumley.
0:33.6	On our Desert Island this week is the composer Peter Maxwell-David. Max, you have eight discs. Would you prefer scores? I probably would prefer scores because then you can make your own interpretation in your own mind. Not that it would be any better than the ones on the record, but at least it would change. And records don't, you know. No, they don't, and records is what you've got.
0:56.5	Now, in real life, you've chosen to live on a small island,
1:00.1	so you quite enjoy solitude.
1:02.9	Very much so, yes.
1:04.2	I think it's important for a composer,
1:07.2	not only to be with people working with musicians
1:10.5	and knowing how audiences react and what the professional side of communicating music is all about, but also to be by himself so that he comes to terms with the compositional problems that he has in his own time and to the fullest possible extent. And that's my reason
1:29.1	for, in fact, going to an island, not a desert one. In choosing your eight records, what were you
1:35.0	looking for? Did you have a plan? Not really. I didn't have a plan when I thought about this,
1:40.9	but I didn't choose my favourite pieces in a way in the way that most people I think do,
1:48.0	because as a composer, as a musician, you carry around in your head an enormous number of scores.
1:55.8	And I think a lot of the pieces which most people might think I would choose,
2:02.0	like the Beethoven symphonies or quartets or the Mozart operas or things which are standard,
2:08.4	well, you know those so well that you can more or less just play them through in your mind
2:13.6	and go from the beginning to the end.
2:16.5	And I think that one wants to find something which perhaps
2:21.0	one doesn't know quite so well and which is going to be very stimulating. Where do we start?
2:27.3	What's your first one? Well, the first one is by Beethoven, in fact. It's the great fugue from
	...

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