Dates

• 7 Sep 2025, 7:30 p.m., St Magnus Cathedral, Kirkwall, Scotland, UK, Online programme

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Repertoire Hills Tell Old Stories, by George McPhee; Pa pisedag: Kyrie, Gud Fader allsom, by Mogens Pederson; Pa Kristi fodselsdag: Kyrie, Gud Fader at himmering, by Mogens Pederson; Kaiserquartett II. Poco adagio cantabile, by Joseph Haydn; Clara's Song, Courting on Helgoland, by Edvard Grieg; Salut d'Amour, by Edward Elgar; Jesu, the very thought of thee, by Edward Bairstow; Five Pieces for String Orchestra I & II, by Paul Hindemith; Bohemian-Danish Folk Tune paraphrase for String Orchestra, by Carl Nielsen; Sailing By, by Ronald Binge

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Description

A concert of music to celebrate a great discovery and the North Sea island where it happened a hundred years ago.

Helgoland lies in the windswept German Bight, well known from the Shipping Forecast, with Germany the nearest land and Denmark further north. Its lack of trees and pollen made it the ideal place for the young German physicist Werner Heisenberg to avoid hay fever in June 1925. And amidst the sound of the wind and the sea he completed the creation of quantum theory. The director of the Helgoland Museum, Dr Simone Arnhold, shares the story of the island and Heisenberg, amidst a musical backcloth.

The music is provided by Orkney Camerata conducted by Iain Campbell, and the Orkney Chamber Choir conducted by Robert Hersey, with Hannah Firth (soprano) and Iain Campbell (piano). There is Haydn, Grieg, Elgar and the 17th-century Danish composer Mogens Pedersøn; works from 1925 and after by Edward Bairstow, Hindemith and Nielsen; and Ronald Binge’s much-loved Sailing By. The concert closes with the world premiere of a new work by George McPhee, Hills Tell Old Stories. in memory of the physicist Peter Higgs and his love of the outdoors, walking and music: a setting of a text from a George Mackay Brown poem.

Hills tell old stories. Cliffs
are poets with harps

– George Mackay Brown, Rackwick, A Child’s Scrapbook

Heisenberg arrived at Helgoland on Saturday 6 June 1925 coughing and sneezing, and with such a swollen face that his landlady decided he had been in a fight. She installed him in a quiet room on the second floor of her Gasthaus that overlooked the beach and the North Sea. But he didn’t stop working.

– Robert P. Crease, Physics World, December 2024

It was around three o’clock in the morning when the final results of my calculations were before me. I felt profoundly shaken. I was so agitated that I could not sleep. I left the house and began walking slowly in the dark. I climbed on a rock overlooking the sea at the tip of the island, and waited for the sun to come up …

– Werner Heisenberg, 1969

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Performers Iain Campbell, Orkney Chamber Choir, Orkney Camerata, Hannah Firth, Robert Hersey

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Promoter Orkney International Science Festival

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Submitted by Ewan Robertson