Classical music: The Max factor

FOR the past week, various ensembles in Glasgow have been celebrating the music of Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, a man once labelled the enfant terrible of contemporary music, but now, at the ripe old age of 75, a British institution and Master of the Queen's Music to boot.

I vividly remember, as an impressionable schoolboy in the 1970s, watching a television documentary in which this strange figure with devilishly piercing eyes, demonic curly hair, and a motley band of lunatic musicians he called The Fires of London, spoke of his music with alarming clarity, intelligence and self-belief.

I wouldn't pretend to have understood Max's music at the time, but its challenging nature – uncompromising, radical, unnerving, and driven by a ceaseless white-hot intensity – had a whiff of impatient genius. Just what it all meant, even the savage parodies that became his most populist trademark, was not going to reveal itself easily. But it was seductive, in many cases addictive.

Fast forward 35 years – during which Scotland has witnessed first hand his tirelessly productive St Magnus Festival years and the ten Strathclyde Concertos uniquely commissioned by the former Strathclyde regional authority – and things seem a lot clearer with Max's music.

There are, I think, various reasons for that. Max himself now writes much more economically than before, particularly his orchestral textures, which acutely sharpens meaning and impact.

Take his latest work, the overture St Francis of Assisi, premiered last week by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. There is an unmistakable familiarity in its meteoric explosion of ideas, tamed by haunting lyrical strands inspired by the composer's lifelong obsession with plainsong. Combined with his tendency these days to work with leaner textures, it was an intoxicating cocktail of nostalgia and fresh revelation.

The refining process has been progressive, as the Scottish Chamber Orchestra's performances at the weekend of the Fourth Symphony (a work it commissioned back in 1989) perfectly illustrated. Although its instrumentation is super-refined – rather like Mahler – its expansive, seamless argument remains a relatively tough nut to crack. But last week's renewed exposure, a cracking performance, opened new vistas into its mysteries.

Indeed, like any good book or painting, every repeat visit reveals something new and undiscovered in much of Max's earlier music. When the RSNO performed the Fifth Symphony at this year's Edinburgh Festival, for instance, the presence of so many sublime, lyrical undercurrents was a fresh revelation. Could our ears simply be more attuned to what was very new ground at the time of conception? The biggest test of that comes this Sunday, when the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra rounds off the Glasgow celebrations with a concert performance of Max's first major opera Taverner, a work begun when he was studying at Princeton with the American composer Roger Sessions, taking 16 years to complete before its premiere in 1972.

It was a notoriously difficult work then, as much for its subject matter as its extravagant scoring and fiendishly uncompromising score. In fact, Max never truly envisaged it being performed, referring to it in a recent web interview as "a private, personal project".

It is an opera about the 16th century composer, John Taverner, and a version of his life story that saw him shun music to take up the anti-Catholic cause as an active Lutheran revolutionary. So important was he as a musician, Cardinal Wolsey apparently let him off with little more than a reprimand. The work is huge in concept, requiring a children's chorus and on-stage band of early instruments in addition to a large cast and orchestra. Which goes some way to explaining why, beyond its premiere in 1976 at Covent Garden, and two later productions in Sweden and America, it has never been staged again.

Martyn Brabbins, who conducts Sunday's performance, sees many merits in its excesses. "It was hugely long in gestation and uncompromising in its demands, but more than anything you have to bow down before a composer willing to put so much energy and time into writing a piece simply because he wanted to," he says.

"As for the plot, Max has the knack of choosing the kind of subject that not only has a clear sense of drama, but also a bigger concept behind that, which relates to us all".

For this opera, Max's underlying issue for was his attitude to organised religion. In his mind, it was the political aspect of Taverner's actions that fascinated him – the psychology of the revolutionary, which might, as he has often said, apply equally to later protagonists in the French, Russian or Chinese uprisings.

But can all that be expressed satisfactorily in a concert performance? Will Taverner get a chance to prove itself?

The honest response from Brabbins is that "we'll have to wait and see". There will be an element of costume, movement and lighting in this performance, but nothing quite like the opulent sets that were created for its early stage productions.

On the other hand, a star cast is lined up to sing its numerous double roles, including Daniel Norman, Martin Hill, David Wilson-Johnson and Susan Bickley. "It's important we hear it as part of this retrospective on Max," says Brabbins. "He would feel it was vital and crucial in his development. It was his first really major achievement."

For that alone, Sunday's performance is momentous. And if it's true that the passage of time has helped deepen our appreciation of the early Max complexities, then maybe Tavernerwill be heard for the performable opera it surely is. That's really what composer retrospectives on this scale should be all about.

• Peter Maxwell Davies' Taverner is at the City Halls, Glasgow, 8 November, 0141-353 8000.