Black Pentecost (1979) has a clear point to make. The old Orkney ways—and perhaps the islands themselves—are under threat from self-intoxicated, self-justifying industrial capitalism. If they lose the battle something natural, and therefore essentially human, dies with them. The horrors of despoilation are bleakly depicted in George Mackay Brown's texts, and the satanic quality of the Black Star boss is underlined by Maxwell Davies's twisting of his lines into a crazy, dehumanized baritone coloratura.
No less Orcadian in inspiration, the earlier Stone Litany (1973) is worlds apart: tortuous settings of Orcadian runic graffiti, their content enigmatic, with intense, weirdly inventive orchestral accompaniments and meditations—flexatone rampant. In the short final movement, the composer signs off—with no false modesty—''Max the Mighty carved these runes''.
On the political correctness scale, Black Pentecost gets 10 out of 10 from me, and yet musically it was Stone Litany that left the strongest aftertaste, plus that all-important itch to go back and explore. The character is alluringly multi-faceted: sharply-etched detail as well as charged atmosphere. Black Pentecost has its moody moments, but despite fine writing like the Mahlerian string elegy near the start for the final movement, much of it seems to me diffuse—too fluent for its own good—in comparison. Performances, however, are all impressive. Della Jones not only copes with the wild melismas of Stone Litany but probes their expressive core. David Wilson-Johnson balances elegant melancholy against the boss's ravings tellingly in Black Pentecost, and the BBC Philharmonic play for the composer as though this music had always been in their blood. I found the transfer level a little low—volume needed pumping up in long pianissimos—but the sound is clear and atmospheric.'