Castles and seabirds

Tim Williams’s final bow

At Hallé St Peter’s (above), Psappha’s final concert with Tim Williams as artistic director opened with new works by Ben Gaunt and Derri Joseph Lewis (above). Gaunt’s All the Castles I have Ever Loved, an almost cartoonish string sextet evocation, remained tantalisingly abstract, while guitarist Tom Mckinney spun the delicate and colourful threads of Lewis’s …BREATHE… into an intricate, intriguing whole. Both works were bold, clear-headed and original – unlike

Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s meandering Sola for viola and electronics, despite Alex Mitchell’s diligent and assured performance.

Orkney, where Psappha’s long-time champion Peter Maxwell Davies spent much of his life, formed a visual backdrop to works by Lisa Robertson, Nina Danon, Athanasia Kontou, Electra Perivolaris and, finally, Maxwell Davies himself. Williams’s five short but transfixing films of seabird colonies and towering rock formations complemented scores which made the bewitching scenery feel at once distant and close at hand, as if the spray of the North Atlantic were suspended in the springtime Mancunian air. Tom Stewart