How Max put Orkney at the heart of his St Magnus festival – and in the heart of his extraordinary music

The festival founded by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies hits its 50th edition this midsummer and continues to connect culture and community. Also this week – is 432Hz the magic number?

This midsummer will be the 50th St Magnus festival. Founded in Orkney in 1977 by the composer Peter Maxwell Davies, who had recently moved there, and the poet George Mackay Brown, who rarely left the archipelago, that half-century of festivals is a living legacy of connection across culture and community.

The first festival began with the premiere of Max’s opera, The Martyrdom of St Magnus, staged in the cathedral in Kirkwall named for the saint, a magnificent blood-red sandstone building, first established in Kirkwall by Magnus’s nephew Earl Rognvald in 1137, around which the rest of the city orbits.