Top composer premieres new work at festival

Renowned composer Sir James Macmillan has premiered a work written to mark the centenary of the end of the First World War.

The Scots music maestro’s piece All the Hills and Vales Along was performed for the first time last night as part of The Cumnock Tryst festival in Ayrshire.

The work was commissioned by the London Symphony Orchestra and 14-18 NOW, the UK arts programme for the First World War centenary.

The composition is set to five poems by the Aberdeen-born war poet Charles Hamilton Sorley and was performed by Ian Bostridge, the Edinburgh Quartet, Nikita Naumov, Sirocco Winds, the Dalmellington Band and the Cumnock Tryst Festival Chorus.

Following last night’s chamber version, the full orchestral version will be premiered at the Barbican in London on November 4.

The festival was created and is run by Sir James, who grew up in Cumnock before studying music at Edinburgh University.

He said: “I wanted to mark our fifth festival by writing a special new piece.

“I have been waiting for a long time to write this piece for Cumnock.”

Charles Hamilton Sorley was killed at the Battle of Loos, aged 20.

His last poem, “When You See Millions of the Mouthless Dead” was discovered in his kitbag after his death.