The Valley by the Sea

How the sounds and the light and the flow of time in the Orkney valley of Rackwick influenced the music of Peter Maxwell Davies. A BBC Scotland radio programme from 1982 with the poet George Mackay Brown tells the story of the composer and the valley in the island of Hoy with its breaking seas and scattered croft houses, with a visual sequence of images added today.

Recording, editing and radio production by Howie Firth. Music from Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’s Symphony No. 1 and Renaissance Scottish Dances. Moving images by Selena S. Kuzman. With thanks for individual photographs to Orkney Library and Archive for images from the Gunnie Moberg Archive, and to the Bevan family.