CD: Maxwell Davies: A Mirror of Whitening Light; Military March; Second Taverner Fantasia

The 1964 Second Taverner Fantasia was a by-product of Davies's first opera, based upon the life of the 16th-century composer John Taverner, and uses material from the opera (itself based upon a Taverner In Nomine) to generate a 45-minute, quasi-symphonic structure of great rigour and uncompromising power. Completed 13 years later, A Mirror of Whitening Light is one of the most entrancing results of Davies's early years in Orkney, a shimmering exploration for chamber orchestra of the glinting soundworld so characteristic of that period in Davies's music.