Maxwell Davies’ 'Das Rauschende der Farbe' (The Sound of Colour) is a reflection on the life and work of the German artist Paula Modersohn-Becker who died aged 31 in 1907. Maxwell Davies first got to know the artist’s work whilst on a school exchange in Hamburg in 1951 and the composer has since written that Modersohn-Becker’s work has influenced the way that he views the relationship between art and the landscape in which it is produced.  This is a particularly significant statement for a composer whose music is often a response to the land and seascape of his adopted home in the Orkney Isles. 
Commissioned by the Bremer Philharmoniker and first performed by them in 2007, the 30 minute orchestral work in three movements is one of the key works by Maxwell Davies in recent years.