On Music

Peter Maxwell Davies presumably enjoys his own company. For the past 25 years, despite holding a succession of composing and conducting residencies with various Sassenach orchestras, he has regularly retreated to the seclusion of his Orkney croft on Hoy. Solitude clearly suits him: coming up for 60 in September, he has just capped his series of 10 'Strathclyde' Concertos with a concluding showpiece for full orchestra, and will conduct the premiere of his Fifth Symphony at the Proms in August. Yet, in basing his 1979 chamber opera, The Lighthouse, on one of the murkier mysteries of the deep - the unexplained disappearance of three keepers from the Flannan Isle Lighthouse in 1900 - Sir Peter chose to focus upon the destructive effects of enforced isolation on the human mind.

Scored for three male voices - tenor, baritone and bass, doubling as the trio of vanishing keepers and the three Lighthouse Commission officers who row out to the isle, only to find the light on but nobody home - Max's maritime mystery melodrama has now been given a fresh look for his birthday year by the enterprising Cardiff-based company Music Theatre Wales (above), founded specifically to stage the work a decade ago by the conductor Michael Rafferty and director Michael McCarthy when they were still students. Premiered in Stuttgart, MTW's new staging opened here in Swansea on Saturday and reaches London tomorrow before being filmed for an autumn screening by BBC2.

7.45pm tomorrow Queen Elizabeth Hall, South Bank Centre, (071-928 8800) pounds 7.50-pounds 20

(Photograph omitted)