St Magnus International Festival

Sally Beamish, celebrating her 60th birthday this year, has long connections with St Magnus Festival and Orkney and here the BBC Symphony Orchestra plays a work inspired by George Mackay Brown’s novel Magnus full of northern light and seascapes. The first of two works with chorus also looks seawards, in the characterful Songs of the Fleet by Stanford which stands as part of the Festival’s commemoration of The Battle of Jutland; indeed part of this work Farewell was used in memorials at the time. Beethoven’s epic Symphony No. 9 is performed here for the very first time at the Festival and continues the Jutland commemoration with its hymn, the Ode to Joy, celebrating freedom, brotherhood and togetherness.