Each of these concertos has a sort of programme, rather an enigmatic one in both cases, but in each it provides useful signposts as well as an intriguing puzzle to solve. In the Fifth Concerto Maxwell Davies's musical material includes a sixteenth-century two-part song and a fragment of a Haydn overture. In the Sixth a simple, folk-like theme recurs in various transformations, suggested by a Brueghel painting of children's games and the ritual or mythic prototypes they often conceal. In both concertos, though, the nature of the solo instruments is at least as important as the programme in determining the work's sound-world. So in No. 5, there is a predominance of cantabile or florid writing, implied at least as much by the pairing of two string instruments as by the presence of that two-part objet trouve; the strong sense of tonal pull presumably derives from the Haydn quotation. The sound of No. 6 is governed by the solo instrument's quietness and its need for discreet accompaniment (from crisply precise percussion, often enough); the flute's coolness of sound (and an occasional 'Scotch snap') give more than a hint of folk-like freshness to its melodies even when the tune that will eventually be revealed is less than obviously present.
Apart from the avowed subtexts I can't help hearing others: the flute in No. 6 is audibly trying out lyrical partners, finding perhaps its most satisfying relationship with the clarinet in the concerto's beautiful slow coda. And in No. 5 the two disparate pieces of pre-existing material are surely not the only kinships with the past that Maxwell Davies admits to. Did not someone else write a sinfonia concertante for just these instruments? Was not a certain Finnish composer (middle of the slow movement) rather adept at this way of building a climax from what we had thought was an accompaniment figure? And of whom does a finale beginning in Bulgarian dance-rhythm remind you? In formal ingenuity, too, both concertos repay repeated listening; both are extremely well played and cleanly, carefully recorded.
'