Scarcely into my Harnoncourt long-live-the-music memorials, now another Big Hero gone.... for anyone who accessed this thing called Classical Music via Radio 3 in the early 1970s, Max was a terrific provocateur of listening, apprehending, thinking about what music was, is and could be... I still remember my excitement at the very first listen - the Vesalli Icones on borrowed vinyl, which I took out purely because the anatomical artwork, the dancer, the ideas in the sleevenotes really grabbed my imagination... and yet it could still be listened to as a cello-chamber-concerto - the many-layered Max with all his inexhaustible meanings! The compellingly pixie-ish mischief of his characteristic facial expression, in so many photos, and film of his dagger-sharp performances with The Fires of London, seemed wonderfully apt to the art itself!
Then his love of wild nature, his move to Orkney, the Old Man of Hoy beyond his window, his need for silence inhabited only by nature - all these spoke to me on a very deep, instinctual level in themselves, but then the early Orkney pieces like Ave Maris Stella and the 1st Symphony with their wave-motions and birdcalls, the sheer intensity of atmosphere and expression seemed to be the music I'd been looking for beyond my obsession with "Bruckner, Mahler, Schoenberg" ....But how long I had to wait to hear those earlier masterpieces like the 2nd Taverner Fantasia or above all Worldes Blis - both of which became two of my personal musical icones themselves ....
It's probably that earlier phase - broadly the mid-60s to the mid-70s - that I identify with most, where that sense of fiery, endlessly innovative musical flow was at its fiercest. From the épater les bourgeois of 8 Songs for a Mad King or the Missa super L'Homme Armé (playing as I write) to the 1st Symphony is some journey!
Perhaps I got on less well with the more "neoclassical" later works like the Strathclyde Concertos - I sometimes wondered if Max hadn't been a little too concerned with writing music for the players to enjoy playing! But there were always works like the Violin Concerto - which does make a great partner with Dutilleux' L'Arbre des Songes - that seemed to exist in their own creative space, as a brilliant rapprochement of the Romantic, contemporary and neoclassical. (I wished that he'd followed up that brilliant break with his typical approach which was the 5th Symphony - but we had to wait for the 9th to find out where that might lead...)
Like Harnoncourt, a long and wonderfully creative life, with so much of the past, present and future in the work itself. Finally, mortality seemed to suit Max's inspiration - how wonderful that this scorching life should end with two of his most beautiful, intense and personal of creative expressions - the 9th and 10th Symphonies!
Max is dead - long live the Mad King!
Then his love of wild nature, his move to Orkney, the Old Man of Hoy beyond his window, his need for silence inhabited only by nature - all these spoke to me on a very deep, instinctual level in themselves, but then the early Orkney pieces like Ave Maris Stella and the 1st Symphony with their wave-motions and birdcalls, the sheer intensity of atmosphere and expression seemed to be the music I'd been looking for beyond my obsession with "Bruckner, Mahler, Schoenberg" ....But how long I had to wait to hear those earlier masterpieces like the 2nd Taverner Fantasia or above all Worldes Blis - both of which became two of my personal musical icones themselves ....
It's probably that earlier phase - broadly the mid-60s to the mid-70s - that I identify with most, where that sense of fiery, endlessly innovative musical flow was at its fiercest. From the épater les bourgeois of 8 Songs for a Mad King or the Missa super L'Homme Armé (playing as I write) to the 1st Symphony is some journey!
Perhaps I got on less well with the more "neoclassical" later works like the Strathclyde Concertos - I sometimes wondered if Max hadn't been a little too concerned with writing music for the players to enjoy playing! But there were always works like the Violin Concerto - which does make a great partner with Dutilleux' L'Arbre des Songes - that seemed to exist in their own creative space, as a brilliant rapprochement of the Romantic, contemporary and neoclassical. (I wished that he'd followed up that brilliant break with his typical approach which was the 5th Symphony - but we had to wait for the 9th to find out where that might lead...)
Like Harnoncourt, a long and wonderfully creative life, with so much of the past, present and future in the work itself. Finally, mortality seemed to suit Max's inspiration - how wonderful that this scorching life should end with two of his most beautiful, intense and personal of creative expressions - the 9th and 10th Symphonies!
Max is dead - long live the Mad King!
The Fires of London sprang to mind and I acquired their SW7 phone number to make contact but they were absent on tour and 'Max' answered the phone. Such a friendly and articulate communicator in a lengthy conversation which also provided me with guidelines and several leads. Also gave me a contact where I could acquire a large print of him seated by his long-horn gramophone at his home at Hoy. Long since framed and placed above my hi-fi equipment in my living room. I often sit and look at it with affection and rather feel a heart-pang will follow in future as I recall many decades of enlightenment from his work. 
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