9:30
2018 NZ Composer Sessions
Nigel Keay
Nigel Keay Photo: SOUNZ Centre for New Zealand Music
Fanfare for Orchestra was commissioned as part of the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra's Composer-in-Residence programme to open a special concert to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the end of World War II. This short work for large orchestra follows an A-B-A structure with the archetypal fanfare elements sounding out from the brass section. The other orchestral sections create simultaneously a “bustling crowd” texture where much jazz-like syncopation can be heard.
NIGEL KEAY: Fanfare for Orchestra
New Zealand SO/Marc Taddei
RNZ
Louisa Nicklin
Louisa Nicklin Photo: SOUNZ Centre for New Zealand Music
One (2017) is a short and simple piece depicting the nspeed at which moments come to an end. The tonality of the work is based on Jenny McCleod's Tone Clock Theory. As the piece progresses the tonality splits and breaks into binary 'hours'
LOUISA NICKLIN: One
New Zealand SO/Marc Taddei
RNZ
Jessie Montgomery -Break Away
"Breakaway was born out of a series of improvisations that PUBLIQuartet was working on where we formed a suite of short pieces riffing on several different styles of music from hip-hop to electronica to twentieth-century modern. Woven among some of my own chosen specific imagery, I adapted some of the techniques from that suite into this 5-movement work. The score calls on the quartet to both play with and "break away" from the score at various points, thereby attempting a seamless dialogue between the written score and the whims of the quartet, in which the piece takes on further transformation at each performance.
"The first movement, Lilting, is an homage to Anton Webern with a focus on gestural dialogue. The second movement, Songbird, is an image of an individual’s voice trying to emerge against a harsh facade and includes the first improvised passages in the work. The third movement, Smoke, is loosely based on the form of a jazz tune of my own design. The 4th movement, Quick Pass, serves as a transition to the final movement Break Away, in which the quartet incorporates it's most open improvised sections." Jessie Montgomery
JESSIE MONTGOMERY: Break Away
PUBLIQuartet
Azica ACD 71302
Jack Body - Five Lullabies
"Risky, perhaps, to create a set of 'Lullabies', if one wants to avoid sending an audience to sleep! But a lullaby might not always be soporific, if we consider the state of mind of the singer, who may be singing as much for themselves, projecting onto the child their own anxieties, frustrations, aspirations, hopes.' Jack Body
BODY: Five Lullabies
Tudor Consort/Simon Ravens
RNZ
Ligeti - Etudes, Book I
Ligeti composed a cycle of 18 études for solo piano between 1985 and 2001. They are considered one of the major creative achievements of his last decades, and one of the most significant sets of piano studies of the 20th century, combining virtuoso technical problems with expressive content, following in the line of the études of Frédéric Chopin, Franz Liszt, Claude Debussy, and Alexander Scriabin but addressing new technical ideas as a compendium of the concepts Ligeti had worked out in his other works since the 1950s. Pianist Jeremy Denk wrote that they "are a crowning achievement of his career and of the piano literature; though still new, they are already classics.
LIGETI: Etudes, Book 1
Erika Haase (pno)
Col Legno WWE 1CD 20501
Arvo Part - Tabula Rasa
PART: Tabula Rasa
Gidon Kremer (vln), Tatiana Grindenko (vln), Alfred Schnittke (prep pno), Lithuanian CO/ Saulus Sondeckis
ECM 817 764
Eve de Castro-Robinson - 2018 Best Classical Artist
Eve de Castro-Robinson gives the 2018 Lilburn Lecture Photo: 2018 National Library-Imaging Services, Department of Internal Affairs
Eve de Castro-Robinson was named "Best Classical Artist" at the Vodafone New Zealand Music Awards. In this week's Lilburn Lecture 2018, de Castro-Robinson looks at the experience of the female composer in Aotearoa New Zealand, in the year we marked 125th anniversary of suffrage. How far have women composers come in 125 years?
DE CASTRO-ROBINSON: A selection from The Gristle of Knuckles
Eve de Castro-Robinson (various instruments), various musicians
Rattle RAT D078
11:05 Relevant Tones - Foster the Music: Darmstadt
One of the world’s most famous new music festivals has been held in Darmstadt since 1946. We’ll trace the festival from its beginnings through modern times and feature some of the seminal works that were premiered there.
