Description
Peter Maxwell Davies is universally acknowledged as one of the foremost composers of our time, and is currently Master of the Queen's Music. Plainchant, musical tradition and the haunting landscape of his adopted Orkney Islands all serve as inspiration to Maxwell Davies' extraordinary and fecund imagination. This is the fourth release in a series of ten quartets commissioned by Naxos. 'Naxos Quartet No. 7' (2005) is a tribute to the Baroque architect Francesco Borromini. Its intense and brooding seven movements are contrasted by the bright and airy single-movement 'Quartet No. 8' (2005), based on John Dowland's Queen Elizabeth's Galliard, and dedicated to Queen Elizabeth II on the occasion of her eightieth birthday.