Pianist Kathryn Stott on her professional swansong at the St Magnus Festival – 'these will be the last notes I play in public'

Memories lie at the heart of her long overdue return to Orkney, central to which is a highly-personalised solo recital, “Postcards and Memories” in St Magnus Cathedral, part of a worldwide farewell tour celebrating the end of the 65-year-old’s lengthy performing career.

“I always knew I’d call time rather than be somebody who’d go on playing till they were 100,” Stott explains. “When I found myself saying to my granddaughter what I’d said to my own daughter years ago, that I couldn’t be with her because I had to practise, I knew it was time to refocus my priorities.

“I’ve had a wonderfully fulfilling piano career, but I just wanted to explore new things, hobbies like life drawing and pottery that I’d never had time for before.

Stott remains a highly sought-after teacher at Manchester’s Royal Northern College of Music. "I'll keep on working with young people,” she adds.

Her playing career was, to some extent, thrust upon her. “I didn’t choose to go to the Menuhin School at the age of eight, I just found myself there,” she recalls. “Proceeding to college in London seemed automatic.”

Despite periods of nagging doubt, gaining recognition in the 1978 Leeds International Piano Competition helped launch a career remarkable for its championing and commissioning of new repertoire, her shared discovery of authentic Argentine tango, her longstanding duo partnership with cellist Yo Yo Ma, and her legacy of award-winning recordings that celebrate such quintessentially English composers as Bridge, Ireland and Walton.

Stott’s presence in Orkney this month also recognises her distinguished contribution to chamber music, teaming up for the first time with this year’s resident Edinburgh Quartet in Cesar Franck’s Piano Quintet. “Franck didn’t write heaps of chamber music, but this is a masterpiece,” she insists.

Elsewhere in this midsummer Festival programme, highlights range from the world premiere of a major new community commission, The Rhythm of the Stones, by composer Stephen Deazley and Orkney Voices, and a screened installation of Gerda Stevenson’s and Festival director Alasdair Nicolson’s film The Storm Watchers, to a Festival Chorus performance of Carmina Burana.

Swedish string orchestra Musica Vitae open the classical programme with Nicolson’s new cello concerto, Storm Runes, while Ensemble Hesperi celebrate the musical riches of the Scottish Enlightenment and Soprano Elizabeth Llewellyn sings Coleridge Taylor, Puccini and Mahler with pianist Simon Lepper.

But sentiments look set to run highest in Stott’s emotive solo recital. “It’s not something you ever anticipate, having to make up a final programme. So I’ve gone for what I’m calling ‘musical postcards’, every one relevant to something in my life, starting at the very beginning with Bach.”

She plays tributes to teachers like Nadia Boulanger via the music of her sister Lili, recalls “the bombshell discovery of tango in Argentina” with some brooding Piazzolla, celebrates her love of Fauré and Ravel, of Norwegian friends through Grieg, and includes recent works by Caroline Shaw and Carl Vine. “It’s a deeply personal narrative, not me doing a Desert Island Discs thing”, she promises.

The final work, specially commissioned for the tour, is by Graham Fitkin. It’s personal, she says, having first commissioned him for her 40th birthday concert at the Wigmore Hall and subsequently given 11 premieres of his works. “My one request to Graham was, this will be the last notes I play in public, so keep that in mind!” With the help of Fitkin’s Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly – the euphemism coined by SpaceX after its 2023 Starlink rocket explosion – it doesn’t seem as if Stott will be going quietly.

The St Magnus Festival runs from 21-29 June in venues throughout Orkney. Kathryn Stott plays solo (24 June) and with the Edinburgh Quartet (27 June) in St Magnus Cathedral. For details, see www.stmagnusfestival.com