- Written in 1985, An Orkney Wedding, With Sunrise is a single-movement piece for orchestra and bagpipe solo (one of the few pieces of classical repertoire featuring the bagpipes as a featured soloist).
- In the score, Davies requests the bagpipe soloist to wear traditional Scottish regalia and parade into the concert hall.
- Davies wrote the following about the piece, inspired by a friend’s wedding he had attended:
- “It is a picture postcard. We hear the guests arriving, out of extremely bad weather. This is followed by a processional and [a] first glass of whiskey. The band tunes up and we get on with the dancing, which becomes ever wilder, until the lead fiddle can hardly hold the band together. We leave the hall into the cold night. As we walk home across the island, the sun rises to a glorious dawn. The sun is represented by the highland bagpipes, in full traditional splendor.”1
- Davies settled in Orkney on the Island of Hoy in 1971, the place whose rugged landscape and legendary folk traditions inspired many of the composer’s works.2
Sources
- Benjamin P. Skoronski, “An Orkney Wedding, with Sunrise,” Tucson Symphony Orchestra, accessed June 26, 2026, https://www.tucsonsymphony.org/program-notes/davies-peter-maxwell/orkney-wedding-with-sunrise/.
- John Warnaby and Nicholas Jones, “Davies, Peter Maxwell,” Grove Music Online (2001), accessed June 26, 2026, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000007299.
Cut IDs
42746