The highlight so far was the opening appearance by the Psappha ensemble. They gave brilliant stagings at the QEH of two of Davies’s music-theatre pieces. In Miss Donnithorne’s Maggot (1974), circling an ancient wedding cake, the soprano Jane Manning made the bitter plight of the Australian model for Dickens’s Miss Havisham shockingly real. In Vesalii Icones (1969), the dancer Michael Rolnick and cellist Jennifer Langridge convincingly depicted (respectively) Christ on the cross and an anatomy demonstrator whose dissection of the human body corresponds (like the choreography) to drawings by Vesalius shown on a screen. Nicholas Kok conducted as fine a performance as I have heard. More from the festival next week.

Paul Driver - The Sunday Times

QEH - Max Festival (17th April 2005)

At the opening event the previous evening, performed by the Manchester-based chamber group Psappha conducted by Nicholas Kok, we saw a different side of Maxwell Davies, the angrily parodic side of the late 1960s that dished up Victorian hymns played on honky-tonk pianos and weirdly distorted foxtrots. It's a side that I thought might have dated, like those Ken Russell films we used to find so shocking. But the sheer integrity of the music gave substance to the gestures.

First we saw Miss Donnithorne's Maggot, in which soprano Jane Manning gave a riveting performance as Miss Donnithorne, the woman abandoned 30 years previously by her lover on her wedding day, but who still wears her wedding dress and fantasises that her husband will return. Sad day-dreams, lewd innuendo, wounded dignity and sheer craziness followed hard on each other's heels, while around the tattered figure the musicians played. It was touching and funny, but for power and telling complexity it was put in the shade by Vesalii Icones.

To combine the famous anatomical drawings of Vesalius (projected here on to a screen) with a danced interpretation of the 14 Stations of the Cross, while a solo cello (Jennifer Langridge) and the ensemble provide a musical commentary, might seem an over-elaborate conceit. But in this brilliant performance, dominated by dancer Michael Rolnick (whose mixture of pathos and eroticism reminded me of those languid portraits of St Sebastian pierced by arrows) it was a riveting meditation on the old dichotomies of appearance and reality, body and spirit.

Ivan Hewett - Daily Telegraph

QEH - Max Festival (17th April 2005)

It is fitting that London’s two-week Maxwell Davies season should begin on the same day as the London Marathon and an audition for Elvis impersonators at Selfridges. Sweat and endurance; the garish lure of popular music — the works of Max, as we’re encouraged to call him, feature them all. How his music will stack up in eternity against Igor or Pierre, let alone Ludwig and Wolfgang, only eternity can tell, although the best of the pieces across 50 years have not lost their punch yet.

Witness this opening banquet of music-theatre pieces, superbly delivered by the Manchester-based group Psappha. Miss Donnithorne’s Maggot of 1974 may not be the meatiest item in the composer’s larder, but the characteristic brisk, piercing sounds of woodwind and percussive tics still paved the way to music of vigour and dramatic cunning.

Miss Donnithorne was the Australian equivalent of Dickens’s Miss Havisham, a spurned 19th-century bride who abandoned the wedding breakfast, but never her gown, for a reclusive, dusty life. Her impersonator on Sunday was the veteran contemporary specialist Jane Manning. A few extra decibels at times would have been useful; but no one could question her brilliant fusion of advanced singing techniques, acting chumps, and the general ability to lift a skirt and scatter icing without seeming absurdly grotesque. Fine work by Psappha too, variously spiking their Victorian parodies with death-watch metronomes or the squeal of a rubbed blue balloon.

The 1969 Vesalii Icones for dancer, cello, ensemble and, in this production, projected images, also features larking about, though the work’s greater complexity, overall seriousness and darker edge gave us a far more substantial meal. Elaine Tyler-Hall and Ace McCarron’s stage direction and lighting made the work’s layers and shadow images crystal clear. But the chief vessels of communication remained Michael Rolnick, superbly expressive as the dancer shifting in provocative stance between the 16th-century anatomical designs of Vesalius and the conventional stations of the Cross, and Psappha’s cellist Jennifer Langridge — the music’s ever-eloquent commentator and observer, positioned close to the dancing space and the images’ torsos and shifting trees.

The purpose of all this? To shock and question, partly: Maxwell Davies’s early music-theatre classics are children of their time, the 1960s. Happily, Psappha, conducted here by Nicholas Kok, also proved the work’s continuing musical strengths in a performance of bold colours and precise attack.

Geoff Brown - The Times

QEH - Max Festival (17th April 2005)

It seems uncanny that two of Britain's greatest composers should have been born in the same year. Last year, the South Bank Centre celebrated the 70th birthday of Sir Harrison Birtwistle. Now, a little late, it's the turn of Sir Peter Maxwell Davies. "Max" is a festival that runs to 30 April, with concerts and workshops featuring professional musicians, students of the Royal Academy of Music, and children from schools in the London area. Venues include the South Bank, the Royal Academy of Music, and Westminster Cathedral.

The opening concert featured two of Maxwell Davies' most searing music-theatre works, written more than 30 years ago. Miss Donnithorne's Maggot (1974) is a miniature scena, a study in madness. Miss Donnithorne, abandoned on her wedding day, continues to wear her wedding gown and stays shut in her house until her death 30 years later. It was an inspired choice to present Jane Manning as Miss Donnithorne, not only because she is an artist of astonishing gift but because she is also one of the greatest performers of Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire, and in her performance of the Maxwell Davies, the two pieces are palpably linked.

When this work was first performed, the soloist, Mary Thomas, was perhaps 30. Manning is easily twice that age, but her performance is desperately touching, the more disturbing for being played as reminiscence. Where Davies introduces Victorian salon music as parody to the lunatic ravings of Miss Donnithorne, there's little laughter; death is round the corner. Maxwell Davies' earlier Eight Songs for a Mad King perhaps eclipsed this work, but with a performance of such scorching intensity (without conductor), the ensemble Psappha and Manning may have turned the tables.

An even earlier work is Vesalii Icones (1969), inspired by the 16th-century Vesalius's anatomical drawings and the 14 Stations of the Cross. For male dancer and solo cello, it is almost a double concerto with small ensemble. Previous productions have dressed the cellist as a monk, but here the hugely talented Jennifer Langridge, in a simple shift, looked more like Mary Magdalene, and the dancer Michael Rolnick, with curls and beard, was Christ-like. His dancing skilfully embraced writhing, leaping, anguish and pain. Nicholas Kok conducted and Elaine Tyler-Hall directed.

Annette Morreau - The Independent

QEH - Max Festival (17th April 2005)

The South Bank's celebration of Peter Maxwell Davies packs a lot into two weeks, but then there is a lot to choose from. Every aspect of Davies's vast output is represented, and there is the obligatory scattering of premieres.

Psappha, the contemporary music group based in Davies's home town of Manchester, started it all off with a double bill of the music-theatre pieces that established him in the 1960s and 70s as an international musical force.

Miss Donnithorne's Maggot, from 1974, sung and acted here with touching vividness by Jane Manning, may too obviously revisit the musical and dramatic world of Eight Songs for a Mad King, composed six years earlier, but Vesalii Icones, the set of 14 solo dances based upon the anatomical drawings of Vesalius, which premiered in 1969, retains every scrap of its disconcerting power.

Both works were staged with directness and economy by Elaine Tyler-Hall; the unhinged Miss Donnithorne commuted in her tattered bridal gown between dressing table and crumbling wedding cake, while the dancing protagonist of Vesalii Icones, the remarkable Michael Rolnick, just shared the acting area with the superb cellist Jennifer Langridge, and some projected images.

The multi-layered nature of that work wasn't always conveyed, though. The correspondence between the dances, Vesalius's original drawings and the stations of the cross became visually a bit tenuous, while the extra ideas - conductor Nicholas Kok and instrumentalists wearing mortuary aprons, for instance - added little.

But Davies's theatrical conception is so powerful, and his music, with its savage parodies and expressionist edge, so memorable, it was just good to hear and see this extraordinary piece so well performed again.

Andrew Clements - The Guardian

QEH - Max Festival (17th April 2005)

The joint South Bank Centre/Royal Academy of Music celebration of the music of Sir Peter Maxwell Davies – “Max” – got off to a fine start with this double-bill of two music-theatre classics: reminders, both, of how innovative, provocative and communicative a composer Maxwell Davies was at the time that these pieces were written.

Conceived as a humorous sequel to “Eight Songs for a Mad King”, “Miss Donnithorne's Maggot” (1974) has remained rather in the shadow of its illustrious predecessor. Partly, perhaps, because it is just as serious – tragic, even – as the earlier work, but in a more intimate and elusive way. The true story of Miss Donnithorne – the Australian woman who, abandoned by her lover on their wedding day in 1856, remained in her wedding attire to lead a reclusive existence for the next 30 years – inspired several creators (not least Dickens) before Maxwell Davies and librettist Randolph Stow alighted on the subject. Yet in its combining of black humour and bare emotion, it is hard to imagine the character and the scenario created around her being treated with more sympathy. And, as with the Baroque and Classical archetypes of ‘Mad King’, a wide range of 'period' music – Victorian parlour and music-hall songs, ballads and quadrilles, and the Wedding Marches of Wagner and Mendelssohn – is utilised to evoke both the external setting and the inner world in which Miss Donnithorne plays out her alienated and forlorn existence.

Although ‘Mad King’ and ‘Miss Donnithorne’ have often – understandably – been presented in harness, it made for a more disturbing coupling to follow the latter with Vesalii icones (1969). Along with ‘Mad King’, this was the work which broke Maxwell Davies through to a wider audience when issued on Ken Russell- sponsored LPs in the early 1970s – and, in its choreographic superimposition of Medieval anatomical drawing on the 14 Stations of the Cross, it might seem redolent of the worst conceptual excesses of that era. In fact, the two sets of images complement each other well-nigh perfectly: the cumulative emotional force of the Christian symbols lent an expressive distance and perspective by the spatial precision and gestural discipline of the Vesalius poses. As with other of Maxwell Davies's theatrical works from this period, there is a level on which musical resonance grows more extreme as the scenario nears its climax: thus the emergence of Antichrist as falsely resurrected icon and accompanied by a foxtrot – something either disconcertingly frivolous or disturbingly ominous, according to interpretation.

Both works received performances of controlled conviction. For long associated with the late Mary Thomas, “Miss Donnithorne's Maggot” is a work Jane Manning has made her own in recent years, and her identification with the figure was palpably evident throughout. The stage setting, which she herself devised, gave the music an appropriate but never confining context (though a little more light in the auditorium with which to refer to the text might not have gone amiss) and the instrumental cameos were unfailingly well characterised. Vesalii icones has different requirements, notably the balancing of a dance element with a chamber discourse featuring solo cello as 'first among equals' within the ensemble. As resourceful as was Michael Rolnick's dancing, it was Jennifer Langridge's long-breathed and intense assumption of the cello part that really galvanised the performance: a still expressive centre which acts as the recurrent point of tension and release. Psappha made a fine showing under Nicholas Kok, such as ensuing performances in this “Max” retrospective will not find easy to emulate.

Richard Whitehouse – www.classicalsource.com

QEH - Max Festival (17th April 2005)

the grand opening event of this series, a lively evening of music-theatre performed by the northern new-music ensemble, Psappha.

In the first half, Miss Donnithorne's Maggot (1974), soprano Jane Manning delivered a bravura tour de force as the eponymous Miss Donnithorne, a musical recreation of Dickens's Miss Havisham, locked in her own dismal wedding-dress delusions since being jilted at the altar.

A messianic dancer, Michael Rolnick, replaced her in the second piece, Vesalii Icones (1969), a series of 14 dances based on the Stations of the Cross, inspired by the drawings of 16th-century Belgian anatomist Andreas Vesalius.

If Maxwell Davies continually paints himself into Pseud's Corner with such abstruse sources and allusions, his music wears his learning more lightly; while taking themselves very seriously, especially the second, both pieces shimmered with wit, vitality and bright musical ideas. As a composer, Maxwell Davies is more genial than Birtwistle, less austere than Goehr. Max's party should be more fun than Harry's.

Anthony Holden - The Observer

Psappha's Prom Debut (8th September 2004)

Wednesday night's Prom was a 70th birthday tribute to Peter Maxwell Davies, played by the Manchester-based new music group Psappha.

It gave us a chance to marvel again at the fierce intelligence and subversive fury of his '60s music.

The Purcell recompositions seemed as fresh as ever, but they were put in the shade by the Missa super L'Homme Arme, a reworking of 15th century mass fragments into a simultanious musical and dramatic satire of the Mass.

The players put the austere original through different kinds of torture, at one point turining it into a fox-trot on the honky-tonk piano. Meanwhile Fiona Shaw, in a monk's cowl, prowled around the ensemble, hurling fragments of St Luke's gospel in a minatory shout as she exited up one of the Albert Hall's stairwells.

In Maxwell Davies's recent Linguae Ignis the plainchants are still there, but the anger and parody has gone. Though not the invention.

Alongside the Maxwell Davies were two pieces by Stravinsky, his Ragtime and the delightful Russian folk-tale Renard. The playing and singing throughout was wonderfully incisive and supple.

Psappha's Prom Debut (8th September 2004)

The discovery that two of your featured composers share a birthday is the sort of coincidence to warm the cockles of ny Proms planner's heart. So on Wednesday a pair of concerts celebrated first the 163rd anniversary of Dvorak's birth then, in the late night programme, Peter Maxwell Davies's 70th birthday.

Both were high-class events.

The Manchester based group Psappha made its Proms debut to celebrate Maxwell Davies: interleaved with Stravinsky's Ragtime and the burlesque Renard, Nicholas Kok conducted two of Davies's parody works from the late 1960s, when foxtrots and honky-tonk pianos lurked around every corner in his music. The Fantasia on a Ground and Two Pavans by Purcell was realised for the Pierrot Players in 1968. From the same year Missa Super L'Homme Arme, with Fiona Shaw as the increasingly unhinged narrator, takes an anonymous 15th-century parody mass setting and refracts it through a series of ever wilder stylistic prisms.

There was a recent piece too. Linguae Ignis is a beautifully proportioned single movement for solo cello (Jennifer Langridge here) and ensemble from 2002, which steadily transforms one plainchant melody into another.

The surfaces of Davies's scores may seem very different now, but his musical preoccupations have remained much the same as they were a quarter-century ago.

4* (out of 5)

Psappha's Prom Debut (8th September 2004)

...Maxwell Davies, interleaved with Stravinsky, was performed by the fine new-music group Psappha at the late night concert.

...the divinely touched actress, Fiona Shaw, cavorting aroung in a monk's habit while emoting in Latin. Shaw's concert hall forays are rarely uneventful, but the moment when she tore off her habit and sprinted up the aisle, cackling like a witch, was worth of the great Sarah Bernhardt herself.

And the music? That was Maxwell Davies's 1968 Missa Super L'Homme Arme, a psychotically distorted fantasy on a 15th-century Agnus Dei. From the same year we also heard the irreverent Fantasia and Two Pavans, which puts Purcell through the mangle, with wild, Hendrix-style glissandos, foxtrots, a hilarious imitation of a gramophone grinding to a halt, a football rattle (rememeber them?) and a whistle. Well, it was the zany Sixties. And to get us in the groovy mood, the programme carried photos of Twiggy in The Boyfriend and Vanessa Redgrave in The Devils. Ah, those were the days.

Maxwell Davies's recent music has nothing like the same iconoclastic devilry, but it is superbly crafted. Here we heard his melancholic 2002 cello-and-ensemble piece Linguae Ignis with its wisps of Whitsun plainchant. It was effectively conducted by Nicholas Kok, with Jennifer Langridge impressive in the solo part.

4* (out of 5)

Psappha's Prom Debut (8th September 2004)

...The Maxwell Davies was unfamiliar and became an inspiring revelatory event that made you mighty glad you were there.

In Manchester-based Psappha's Maxwell Davies programme, Fiona Shaw transformed Missa Super L'Homme Arme (1968) from poor pastiche into virtuoso solo turn, electrifying us with her biblical Latin and rampant histrionics.

Then came Linguae Ignis (2001) for cello and ensemble, a masterpiece that shows Max can be the naked voice of truth when he wants. Jennifer Langridge was the moving soloist.

4* (out of 5)

Psappha's Prom Debut (8th September 2004)

On the very day of Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’s 70th-birthday, the Proms offered a celebration with this late-night performance of works from his 1960s’ ‘expressionist’ phase together with a very recent item, delivered by the Manchester-based ensemble Psappha.

The Fantasia and a Ground on Two Pavans, after Purcell opened the concert just as they had begun many a Fires concert. These exquisitely outrageous re-inventions of Purcell typically make a serious, even ‘dark’ point under cover of their highly entertaining surfaces, their stylistic references ranging even beyond the ubiquitous foxtrots to take-in bluegrass. Psappha’s performances were lovingly realised but I missed the brazen flamboyance that is at the heart of this music. The tiny band’s sound was also dissipated in the vast space of the RAH, the harpsichord being virtually inaudible from where I was sitting.

The ‘parody mass’ Missa super L’homme armé (1968) is a work very much out of the same stable as the Purcell realisations. It assembles wild and fantastical excursions and disruptions around the bedrock of an incomplete and anonymous 15th-century Mass setting based on the eponymous popular song, which reappears throughout the work in a variety of guises. At various points, a speaker intones extracts in Latin from Luke 22, here very effectively taken by Fiona Shaw (better known to the world as Harry Potter’s aunt). She first appeared before the performance began clad in monastic garb wandering around the arena perusing her book. Was it a Proms nutter? She slowly became drawn into the work’s explicit drama before a kind of reverse transvestite flourish saw her reveal a glamorous dress from underneath her habit and exit out of the hall screaming the final lines of text.

Truth to tell, this is one of the very few works of Davies’s which time has not been kind to. Even in its 1971 revision (which removed a rare electronic dimension from the original), it has a camp sensibility which feels somewhat marooned in the era it was written and the trajectory of the piece can be confusing unless you are very familiar with it. Again, it was not helped by an accurate if under-characterised performance which seemed altogether too polite, although admittedly I may be suffering from an extreme identification with the almost frightening intensity and sculpted wildness of the Fires of London’s performances.

Psappha brought us right up to date with Linguae ignis (2001-2), a beautifully written and proportioned study for cello and ensemble – a combination that explicitly harks back to the Vesalii Icones of 1969 (whose mock-Victorian hymn was prefigured in the Missa). Plainsong is systematically transformed into another, both of which form the basis of the Mass for Westminster Cathedral written at the same time. The first one, ‘Dum complerentur dies pentecostes’, is stated at the outset by the solo cello in unusually unadorned form. It sets in motion one of those rapt, inwardly reflective adagios that are such a feature of Davies’s music. With transparent compositional technique, this morphs into an allegro which reaches an ‘inverse’ climax in the shape of a quiet meditation by the cello on the second plainsong ‘Veni, creator spiritus’. The drawn-out time perspectives retrospectively make the work seem longer than its 13 minutes, a familiar Davies ‘trick’ that can also be heard in the handbell-drenched coda of the First Tavener Fantasia of 40 years earlier. The solo part was delivered in a beautifully eloquent performance by Jennifer Langridge underpinned with great sensitivity by an expanded Psappha.

Two of Stravinsky’s works imbued with the earthy rasp of the cimbalom (an instrument Davies has written wonderfully for) completed the programme. The still amazingly original Ragtime refracts a period dance-music through a Cubist prism in much the same way Davies treated Purcell’s dances. This performance was well-marshalled but I missed something of the essence of the music, Stravinskian tang and bite.

A rare outing for the barnyard fable Renard ended the concert. This marvellous piece positively reeks of Russian earth and was here brilliantly dispatched by Psappha and a plangent quartet of male voices. Special mention must also be made of Tim Williams’s inspired cimbalom playing.

Steve Lomas, (Classicalsource.com)

Psappha’s 10th Anniversary Season

10th Anniversary Concert, RNCM: 28 September 2001
In the past ten years Psappha’s reputation as intrepid exponents of contemporary music and music-theatre has spread well beyond its north of England stamping ground. Where this ensemble shines brightest is in difficult repertoire: the tougher it is to execute and the more rigorous on the ear, the better.

Lynne Walker, The Independent

Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival: 25 November 2001
Peter Maxwell Davies’s Mr Emmet Takes a Walk was full of creative originality … Nicole Tibbels, Adrian Clarke and Jonathan Best were the fine soloists and Etienne Siebens conducted the excellent ensemble Psappha.

Barry Millington, The Times

Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival: 1 December 2001
Both works [Ligeti’s Horn Trio and Kurtag’s Scenes from a Novel] were virtuosically performed by members of Psappha.

David Fanning, The Daily Telegraph

The Lowry: 2 December 2001
Psappha’s production of Mr Emmet Takes a Walk won them the Manchester Evening News Award for Best Opera of 2000 and it is not difficult to see why … the conductor Etienne Siebens drew the exemplary playing we have come to expect from Psappha’s talented players.

Manchester on Stage

The Lyric, Hammersmith: 17, 18 & 19 January 2002
Eight Songs for a Mad King can still make considerable impact when as well performed as it is by the ensemble Psappha and baritone Kelvin Thomas.

Rupert Christiansen, The Daily Telegraph

The admirable cast … were superbly accompanied by the contemporary ensemble Psappha.

Fiona Maddocks, The Observer

In both works [Maxwell Davies’ Eight Songs for a Mad King and Mr Emmet Takes a Walk], members of Psappha gave constant proof of why this group has become a mainstay on the contemporary music scene.

Richard Whitehouse, www.classicalsource.com

Press Reviews 1999 - 2001

Hans Werner Henze - El Cimarron
[Director] Tim Carroll’s intelligent Psappha production … will be performed again at the Cheltenham Festival next month when, with the eloquent Stephen Bowen as Esteban and the expert Psappha instrumentalists engaged in Henze’s dramatic and often beautiful score, it should not be missed.

Gerald Larner, The Times

Playing a bewildering variety of percussion instruments, the players themselves became active participants in the drama. This was a remarkable performance of an extraordinary piece where words, music and lighting were used to stunning effect.

Alfred Lawrence, Gloucestershire Echo

Peter Maxwell Davies - Mr Emmet Takes a Walk
Mr Emmet Takes a Walk, launched as part of a superb double bill by the Manchester-based ensemble Psappha … is a beautiful new piece and was performed splendidly by the baritone Adrian Clarke as Emmet, with Rebecca Caine and Jonathan Best in the numerous other parts.

Paul Driver, The Sunday Times

Mr Emmet Takes a Walk was undoubtedly one of the highlights of this year’s St Magnus Festival.

Philip Gates, The Sunday Herald

The strength of the vocal and instrumental performances, along with the theatrical wizardry of the production, give the work the best possible advocacy for its world-premiere tour that begins in Edinburgh tonight.

Tom Service, The Guardian

Mr Emmet Takes a Walk … is mesmerising from start to finish. The three singers – Adrian Clark’s pathological victim, Jonathan Best as a Commendatore-like waiter-cum-spy-cum-technical engineer, Rebecca Caine’s flighty telephonist-cum-femme fatale – were top rate.

Roderic Dunnett, The Independent

Mr Emmet Takes a Walk, written and directed by David Pountney, is fast-moving, imaginative and sometimes hilarious. It’s also a kind of parable of our times. Richard Lloyd Morgan (in the title role), Rebecca Caine (in a dazzling variety of other ones!) and Jonathan Best are a dream cast for this enterprise: Etienne Siebens conducts the Psappha musicians with assurance.

Robert Beale, Manchester Evening News

The enigmatic story … was one of those pieces you found yourself wanting to rewind … just to see what you had missed. Brilliant playing …

Kenneth Walton, The Scotsman

David Pountney’s razor sharp libretto cleverly documents the fragments of Mr Emmet’s life … Richard Lloyd Morgan is brilliant as Mr Emmet … Jonathan Best and Rebecca Caine also sing superbly and skilfully bring to life an array of characters. Robert Innes Hopkins’ versatile set on wheels is ingenious, capable of transforming itself instantly from a padded cell to a cabaret bar, with the help of Davy Cunningham’s bold lighting. However, in this co-production with Muziektheater Transparant, it is the outstanding performance of Max’s music by Manchester-based ensemble Psappha, conducted by Etienne Siebens, that makes this piece such a triumph.

Susan Nickalls, Edinburgh Evening News

Manchester Evening News Theatre Awards
But the piece which takes the award is one we would not have had without The Lowry – where it received its English première before an international tour – Mr Emmet Takes a Walk, the latest music theatre work by son of Salford, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies. Psappha, our own new music specialists, are to be congratulated for making this piece happen.

Robert Beale, Manchester Evening News

Gordon McPherson – Born of Funk and the Fear of Failing
In a programme that included two pieces by Steve Reich, it was nevertheless McPherson’s major new work, Born of Funk and the Fear of Failing, that turned out to be the real hit of the evening. I cannot imagine it being better done than it was by Allan Neave and Psappha, one of Britain’s foremost contemporary music groups directed by André de Rider, who guided his players – string trio, flute, clarinet and two percussionists – with an unerring eye through a complex score.

Dundee Courier

Barossa Festival, Australia
New to the BMF and Australia were the remarkable ensemble Psappha, six players whose modesty and humility were in inverse proportion to their skills and insights. Accompanying Maxwell Davies’ two harrowing dramas (Miss Donithorne, Eight Songs) or in concert, they appeared to be doing nothing special, just a job of work – but doing it superbly well.

Elizabeth Silsbury, Adelaide Advertiser

Peter Maxwell Davies can tickle funny bones just as effectively as he can wrench heart strings. How Psappha’s [musicians] – especially the two winds – kept their faces straight for Maxwell Davies’ exquisitely witty and elegant refashionings of Bach’s preludes and fugues in C sharp minor and C sharp major, while the audience rocked with glee at their sheer impudence, confirms that these are indeed superior creatures.

Elizabeth Silsbury, Adelaide Advertiser

Even more indelible were truly stunning performances of [Peter Maxwell Davies’] Miss Donithorne’s Maggot and Eight Songs for a Mad King, sung by Jane Manning and Kelvin Thomas, with UK ensemble Psappha. Both are little miracles of modern music-theatre…

Graham Strahle, The Australian

The instrumental music, expertly and confidently delivered by the actor-players of Psappha,conveys moods that are unmistakeable… Impassioned outpourings from Jane Manning and Kelvin Thomas were passionately admired for their vocal dexterity and their ability to portray dementia with such awful realism.

Elizabeth Silsbury, Adelaide Advertiser

Bridgewater Hall, Manchester
Psappha have made a speciality of this score [Piers Hellawell’s Truth and Consequences] and seem to find more and more subtlety in colour and rhythm every time they play it.

Gerald Larner, The Times

San Francisco, US
Cellist Jennifer Langridge and percussionist Tim Williams performed Anthony Gilbert’s Moonfaring. Pianist Richard Casey played Simon Holt’s ascetic Nigredo and then joined Langridge for Mark-Anthony Turnage’s jazzy Sleep On. Superb performances…

San Francisco Examiner

Stravinsky Night at The Lowry, Salford
Top marks went to The Soldier’s Tale, which made much more dramatic sense than usual thanks to the colourful characterisation and choreography of Elaine Tyler-Hall’s ambitious production. Along with Robert Tear’s stylish narration, the poised performances of dancers Michael Rolnick, a sinister and super-smooth Devil, of David A John, the simple soldier, and of seductive princess Maxine Fone made a stunning counterpoint to the musicianship of Psappha’s instrumental ensemble.

David Harrison, Manchester Evening News

Royal Scottish Academy of Music & Drama, Glasgow
Nowadays, Stockhausen’s Kontakte is unfamiliar in the sense that it is rarely played. And no wonder, given the virtuosity required to bring it off. Last Wednesday’s performance by two members of the Manchester-based new music ensemble, Psappha – pianist Richard Casey and percussionist Tim Williams … was a triumph. With Casey exercising all-round skill, and Williams equalling that with his own colourful array of percussion timbre, the music had a fresh and compelling contemporary feel to it. Williams and Casey took the floor separately in the first half, the pianist in astounding performances of Jonathon Harvey’s highly effective Tombeau de Messiaen and Ligeti’s phenomenally energetic Etudes pour Piano, Williams showing what no less a mortal could achieve with maracas in Javier Alvarez’s catchy Temazcal.

Kenneth Walton, The Scotsman

Henze Festival, Queen Elizabeth Hall, London
Aided by three instrumentalists – musical participants as well-characterised as the singer/actor – the work [Henze’s El Cimarron] narrates the true-life story of Esteban Montejo from slavery, through the continuing exploitation of plantation workers following abolition, to the bloody fight for Cuban independence first from Spain, later from Americanisation. Tim Carroll’s simple but focused staging charted this often lurid tale with clarity and imagination, while it would be difficult to imagine the musical side – from Bowen’s consummate mastery of Henze’s sing-song Sprechstimme to the percussion-dominated accompanying strands – better achieved.

Matthew Rye, The Daily Telegraph

Gordon McPherson Portrait Concert, Royal Northern College of Music
The Manchester ensemble Psappha, conducted by Nicholas Kok, lived up to their reputation as leading new music specialists by marrying technical wizardry with artistic insight to give the Scottish composer’s work the platform it deserved. The highlight was McPherson’s guitar and ensemble work Born of Funk and the Fear of Failing. Solo guitarist Allan Neave gave a seemingly effortless performance of a difficult score, confidently supported by Psappha.

Deborah Grace, Manchester Evening News