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Maxwell Davies - Mr Emmet Takes a Walk | NMC Recordings PSA1002

Maxwell Davies - Mr Emmet Takes a Walk

£12.69 £10.16

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Label: NMC Recordings

Cat No: PSA1002

Barcode: 0658556106426

Format: CD

Number of Discs: 1

Genre: Opera

Release Date: 27th May 2022

Contents

Artists

Adrian Clarke (baritone)
Rebecca Caine (soprano)
Jonathan Best (bass-baritone)
Psappha

Conductor

Etienne Siebens

Works

Davies, Peter Maxwell

Mr Emmet Takes a Walk

Artists

Adrian Clarke (baritone)
Rebecca Caine (soprano)
Jonathan Best (bass-baritone)
Psappha

Conductor

Etienne Siebens

About

After announcing their new partnership with NMC Recordings – coinciding with the 30th anniversary of the Manchester-based ensemble and record label – Psappha is delighted to re-issue another recording from their catalogue by close collaborator and founding Patron, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies.

Mr Emmet Takes a Walk is a musical depiction of a man's life flashing before his eyes in the moments before his suicide on a railway line. The chamber opera comprises of Mr Emmet's thoughts, memories, and ideas, told through musical fragments derived from material by four other composers; J.S. Bach, Robert Schumann, Andrea Gabrieli, and W.A. Mozart. All four are heard in the introduction of the work, and reappear throughout the course of the work, suggesting half-forgotten events of happier times in Mr Emmet's life.

Mr Emmet himself represents an enigma: is he a business man with briefcase and umbrella pursuing the ultimate commercial contract, a double agent extorting a much shadier deal from a foreign power, or a tragicomical everyman sifting through the flotsam and jetsam of a lifetime to prepare himself for death?

He is sung by a baritone (Adrian Clarke), and is supported by a bass (Jonathan Best) and soprano (Rebecca Caine) who more explicitly adopt multiple roles: she can appear as seducer, mother, chanteuse, he as piano teacher, engineer, waiter and ultimately as nemesis extracting the fatal signature. The drama is framed by the man and woman scrubbing the walls of the room, eradicating the memory of Emmet along with the dirt and blood.

Originally a co-commission between Psappha, the St Magnus Festival and Muziektheater Transparant, this dramatic sonata was the first music-theatre work written by Peter Maxwell Davies after a gap of 17 years. David Pountney provided the libretto and directed the award-winning production, which Psappha premiered in 2000 at the St Magnus Festival, Orkney, and went on to tour across the UK and Europe. This recording was made in 2005 with the original cast and includes a 20-minute conversation between Peter Maxwell Davies and Paul Driver.

"Recorded with maximum attention to clarity and atmosphere, this is an exemplary release." – Gramophone

Psappha is the North West’s only stand-alone professional contemporary classical music ensemble. Founded in 1991 by Artistic Director Tim Williams, the group is dedicated to commissioning, performing and promoting new music – particularly by living composers and emerging musicians. Throughout its 30-year career, Psappha has commissioned and premiered music by more than 500 composers, and has performed across the UK and worldwide on five continents. In the process, it has worked with the likes of Aldeburgh Music, the BBC Philharmonic, the BBC Proms, Glyndebourne Festival, Guggenheim New York, the New York Philharmonic, and Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts.

Psappha supports composers at all stages of their careers, inviting them to work with its core musicians to create, develop and present new work. Through its pioneering ‘Composing For…’ scheme, which launched in 2014, the group has worked directly with more than 140 emerging composers on brand new compositions. All these works are premiered via highquality films on the group’s extensive YouTube channel, which contains more than 230 free-to-view films of live performances and has received more than 120,000 views in the last 12 months alone. The group also launched its own record label in 2004, and its catalogue of recordings are set for re-release in 2022 through its new relationship with NMC Recordings.

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