Features

Liverpool's Metropolitan Cathedral is the venue for the world premiere of a specially commissioned piece of music by the Queen's master of music, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies.

Two choirs and an organ will perform A Hymn To The Spirit Of Fire, a piece that Sir Peter has dedicated to Sir Paul McCartney, at the city’s Metropolitan Cathedral on Saturday 13th December 2008, .

The premiere, organised by the Concerts Society at the Cathedral, marks the first commission on this scale with such an internationally renowned composer.

"I took earplugs"

Sir Peter told BBC Merseyside that he dedicated the piece to Sir Paul after meeting attending the Liverpool Sound Concert in June, "I only met Paul McCartney quite recently and that was when he invited me to a marvellous concert he did in Liverpool at Anfield earlier this year.

"I knew his work of course, way back to the 1960s but I’d never been to that kind of event.

The premiere is in the Metropolitan Cathedral

"He warned me that I should take earplugs because its very loud this kind of music, I did take earplugs and I was glad I did but through the earplugs I could hear that here was an absolutely fabulous musician and his backing group were full of invention and fire.

When it came to a dedication for this piece I thought ‘Who better than Sir Paul McCartney?’, because he has made an unbelievable contribution to music not only in Britain but in the whole world."

Sir Peter, who lives in Orkney, says the scale of audience participation at the concert inspired him, "The thing that really moved me was that there were something over 60,000 people in the stadium and they not only knew the tunes but they knew the words."

"This set me thinking about this commission for Liverpool, because it reminded me of when I was a student in Rome and I used to go along to the wonderful Benedictine monastery.

"At the main festivals there would always be a packed congregation and everybody knew the tunes and the Latin words and they could do them by heart.

"There was a feeling of total commitment and total wonder and the event at Anfield really did remind me of that."

"There were all these people from Liverpool and elsewhere, but they were singing with fervour and joy of that congregation in Rome.

Sir Peter was inspired by the Liverpool Sound

The audience's participation and adoration made a mark on Sir Peter and led to his choice of dedication for his Liverpool composition, "Paul McCartney got them to really love him, to love the music, and to love Liverpool."

"I thought , with that number of people really influencing and benefiting their lives this man really does deserve a dedication."

A Hymn To The Spirit Of Fire will be performed by the Metropolitan Cathedral choir and the Cantata Choir accompanied by organist, Richard Lea.

The use of the Metropolitan Cathedral as the premiere's venue also influenced Sir Peter's composition of the piece when he returned to his Orkney island home, "When I came down from Orkney to Liverpool for Sir Paul’s concert I made a point of spending a very long time in there," Sir Peter says.

"Just enjoying the sheer sense of wonder and just imagining my piece in that context, I hadn’t written it of course then, I was just working out ideas in my head.

"When I’m writing a piece I always go for long long walks with the dog along the Sanday shore up in Orkney.

"Imagining the sound in that space I see the natural landscape there with the sea as some sort of marvellous cathedral.

"Transferring it in to a different kind of cathedral in my imagination I think it helped the composition enormously."

Tickets for the performance on 13 December are £7 and available from the Metropolitan Cathedral gift shop.