ONE of the highlights of the Classic Fair Isle festival was a lecture given by composer Peter Maxwell Davies.

The talk on the subject of festivals in small communities was given at the Bird Observa­tory last Thursday evening.

Sir Maxwell Davies (68), or Max as he prefers to be called, told the audience of his experi­ence of setting up the St Magnus Festival, in spite of opposition from Orkney Islands Council and a 10-year campaign against the festival by The Orcadian. Never­theless, the event went on to be­come one of the most well-known arts festivals in Britain, attracting hundreds of visitors each year. "Taking the festival to remote places has been part of my brief, particularly in recent years. Put­ting professional players together with people who are in the place so there is a meeting of the two is something I have tried to encourage.

"It is important that people who come up stay with local families. There is now a very nice relationship between people in Orkney and people in orchestras, which is all to the good.

"It strikes me that if a festival can have an association with a composer, artist or someone taking inspiration from that place, then that festival has an identity. I really do feel it is essential that people are absolutely committed and involved.

"I think small festivals are much more important than the big ones. A premiere like this one on Fair Isle is much more important than one of the premieres happen­ing this summer at the Proms in London. When you have some­thing like this, which comes from the heart of the community, you have something very special."

It was Sir Maxwell Davies's first visit to Fair Isle and he said he was particularly impressed by the dramatic cliff scenery. "I think seascape plays a big part in my life," he said. "I love it here. It reminds me of Hoy, though in some ways it is even more dramatic. It has got its own tremendous individuality.

"I have often looked across at Fair Isle from Sanday and have always been fascinated. When I got offered the opportunity to come here I snapped it up."

He first met Alastair Stout in 1996 at a summer school for com­posers held in Hoy. The summer school was the last one given by Sir Maxwell Davies. "Perhaps it was a selfish decision to stop the summer schools, but after eight years 1 was starting to take it for granted and found myself saying the same things."

After the premiere of Given Days on Friday, he said: "I thought it went very well. I was particularly impressed by the choral singing. The standard was very high and the choir was obvi­ously extremely well taught."

Sir Maxwell Davies is cur­rently working on a commission for 10 string quartets, the first of which is to be performed in the Wigmore Hall in October. He is also working on some orchestral songs, settings of poems by George Mackay Brown, commis­sioned by the City of London Sinfonia.

"I am doing quite a lot of chamber music now. I like the discipline of writing for four lines without being able to hide behind a lot of orchestration. I don't think I will be doing any more operas or large orchestral pieces."

What of the current state of new music in this country? "The arts need more funding," he said.

"If you go to Germany and Scandinavia, towns the size of Aberdeen, Perth and Inverness have their own orchestras and ballet companies. That is partly for historical reasons, of course. While the European aristocracy were building theatres and opera houses, the landed gentry in this country were spending most of their time shooting things.

"New music is in a bit of a rut. It has become an arcane currency, written by a small clique of people in London where every­one is friends of everyone else. Composers are so geared towards the establishment. When I was down in London I had to form my own group to get pieces played.