News from MaxOpus

1st February 2006

MaxOpus.com, Peter Maxwell Davies’ pioneering website, offers a number of major recordings available for purchase through MaxOpus Music. Launched in 2004, MaxOpus Music provides downloads via MP3 files or the CD Builder program which may be used to create custom audio CDs that are shipped via mail. Recent releases include Resurrection, Maxwell Davies’ 1987 wickedly comic opera, which satirizes the follies of modern society, and two new works — Beacons of Hope (for military band) and the string quartet transcription A Sad Paven for These Distracted Tymes.

Judy Arnold, Maxwell Davies’ manager notes, “Max started the site because he wanted to make recordings of his music available to everyone — wherever they might be in the world — who has access to the Web. By having this site, people who want to obtain [his] recordings can be sure that they will be there, not just for this week or this year, but for all the years in the future...”

Arnold adds, “In the early days, by far the largest number of customers went down the CD route, but as the months have gone on, the customers are equally balanced between downloads and CDs...[and] the site has been a great success. We now have 96 recordings, covering the whole spectrum of symphonies, operas, chamber operas, concertos, orchestral works, oratorios, choral and instrumental works, and works [for] young performers.”

Maxwell Davies’s Naxos String Quartet series continues with the 10 March premiere of Quartet No. 8 by the Maggini Quartet, as part of the “Sounds New” Festival in Canterbury, England.