Sub Navigation

Search Music:

Search for music by typing a word or phrase in the box below or by selecting one or more categories from the list on the side.

Or search for products by selecting an option below, and typing a word or phrase in the box above

  • Scores
  • CDs and DVDs
  • Downloads
  • Education Resources

Chris Adams  

Anastasis

Duration: 20' 00" Year: 2009
for full orchestra

  • Instrumentation
    3*3*3**3*;4331;timp; perc; hp; strings
  • Programme Note

    Anastasis is an exploration of musical contrasts where chamber music elements of intimacy and social interplay are juxtaposed with the colour and power of a full symphonic orchestra. Baroque Concerto Grosso traditions form the conceptual basis of Anastasis: instrumental divisions within the orchestra, like the wind sections, are exploited, and new instrumental groupings have been created using combinations of individual players across the ensemble. Elements from the twentieth century Concerto for Orchestra form have also been utilised, particularly the focus on the diversity of instrumental colour, extended instrumental range and virtuosity, and the array of dynamic and textural possibilities.

    Anastasis, our first taste of the APO’s resident composer, Chris Adams, proved to be a most attractive score.

    Adams knows where and how to uncover unexpected colours in a piece that enjoys jolting us with huge orchestral shouts in among more subdued, almost filigree passages.

    The second movement unfolds, with woodwind patterning, from lounge-laden harmonies and Adams nods to all manner of musics throughout the piece, right through to its conga-line finale.

    It is an appealing score that deserves a life beyound this single performance."

    William Dart, NZ Herald 7th September, 2009
    For the full article please click here

  • Availability

Juliet Palmer  

Aquamarine

Duration: 20' 00" Year: 2000
for piano

  • Programme Note

    The tension between the piano’s percussive mechanism and the fluidity of water has borne fruit in countless works for piano: from Ravel’s Ondine and Chopin’s Raindrop Prelude, to Schubert’s Am Meer. Not coincidentally, these works were among those played by my grandmother as silent film “scores” in the small New Zealand town of Takaka. In Aquamarine watery fragments from the musical past refract and reflect.

  • Availability

Lyell Cresswell  

Ara Kopikopiko

Duration: 22' 00" Year: 2004
for orchestra

  • Instrumentation
    (1)2 (2nd dbls alto fl., 3rd dbls picc.)2(1)2(1)2(1); 4331; strings
  • Programme Note

    Lyell Cresswell describes his work Ara Kopikopiko, which takes its title from the Maori word for Labyrinth, as a concerto for orchestra in which the instruments and ideas are treated as tesserae in a mosaic, assembled to catch the light at different angles. At its premiere the work was introduced by the composer and broadcast on BBC Radio 3.

  • Availability

Chris Cree Brown  

Celestial Bodies

Duration: 25' 00" Year: 2004, r. 2005
for orchestra, electro-acoustic sounds and images

John Rimmer  

Europa

Duration: 25' 00" Year: 2002
concerto for brass band and orchestra

  • Instrumentation

    Orchestra:(1)2,2,2(1),2(1); 4331; timp., perc. (3), hp; strings. (Percussion: small and large suspended cymbals, tam tam, glockenspiel, vibraphone, xylophone, tubular bells, snare drum, 2 bongos, 3 tom toms, bass drum.)
    Brass Band: sop cornet, solo cornet, 1st cornet, 2nd cornet, 3rd cornet, flugelhorn, tenor horn, baritone, tenor trombone, bass trombone, E flat euphonium, E flat bass, B flat bass
  • Programme Note

    In composing this concerto I recognise two contrasting musical cultures within the European artistic tradition. The Brass Band represents what I call a ‘closed’ musical system portrayed by its standardised instrumentation heard to great effect in its stirring marches, sonorous hymn playing, contest pieces and arrangements of popular and show music, while the orchestra with its dazzling array of many instrumental colours, its flexible instrumentation and its potential for pushing musical boundaries, represents an ‘open’ musical system. I wanted also to exploit the virtuosic capacity of the brass band as a concerto soloist and to celebrate through this work the unity and solidarity amongst brass musicians.

    Europa is a one movement work in five main sections which alternate slow atmospheric music with a fast and rhythmic style. The latter is heard in the many rapid passages which switch from band to orchestra and vice versa. Notable also is the relationship between the band and the orchestra particularly in the cadenzas for the brass band followed by the orchestral brass.

    I was spurred into composing this work after reading about Europa, one of the large moons of the planet Jupiter first seen by Galileo in 1610 and named after a goddess of Greek mythology. Such thoughts were instrumental in generating my first musical ideas, for instance the name ‘Europa’ is represented by a six note melody heard throughout the work. However, my initial thoughts about Europa receded as I explored and developed the musical material. ‘Europa’ was commissioned by the Auckland Philharmonia. The work was first performed by the Dalewool Auckland Brass and the Auckland Philharmonia conducted by Miguel Harth-Bedoya on 13 June 2002 in the Auckland Town Hall.

  • Availability

Michael Norris  

Exitus

Duration: 20' 00" Year: 2009
for string quartet

  • Instrumentation
    violin 1, violin 2, viola and cello
  • Programme Note

    The human brain is capable of remarkable feats of understanding and analysis, yet has trouble simply imagining its own death. Death is our blind spot — we cannot conceive of an end to our perceptions and experiences, so we are forced to invent stories about what we will experience after we die.

    As a result, human culture overflows with afterworld narratives, and in some cases these have become rich in specific details, textures and landscapes: afterworlds may be light, dark, watery, icy, misty, subterranean, found in the clouds, in the earth, in the sun, in the moon; they may be places of peace and redemption, or places of violence and damnation.

    Michael Norris

  • Availability

Lachlan McKenzie  

Flute Quintet

Duration: 25' 00" Year: 2002
for flute and string quartet

John Psathas  

Helix

Duration: 20' 00" Year: 2006
for piano trio

Gillian Whitehead  

Hineputehue

Duration: 25' 00" Year: 2002
for string quartet and taonga puoro (Maori instruments)

  • Instrumentation
    Taonga puoro (improvised): poi awhioahio, hue puruhau, koauau ponga ihu, nguru, ororuarangi, ku, putatara, pu kaea, pumotomoto, pupu harakekek, tumutumu
  • Programme Note

    Hineputehue translates literally as the woman of the sound of the gourd, and she is the Maori goddess of peace. The work was written in 2001, at the time of President Bush’s State of the Union address shortly before the invasion of Afghanistan, and suggests the fragility rather than the celebration of peace, particularly in a pre-European environment.

    A number of instruments used in Hineputehue are made of gourds – the gourd, which carried food and water, is a symbol of peace. These include the poi awiowhio, a very quiet bird lure which is swung around the head, the tiny koauau ponga ihu or noseflute which ends the piece, the hue puru hau, a large gourd which is blown across its top opening and the gourd rattles played by the quartet. Two other wind instruments frequently made from gourds, the nguru and the ororuarangi, are also used. Other instruments are the putatara or conch shell trumpet, traditionally used for signalling, the pu kaea or war trumpet, a nguru niho paraoa or flute made from a whale’s tooth, the pumotomoto, associated with birth, and tumutumu (tapped percussion).

    There is a similarity between the stringed instruments of the quartet and the gourds, in that they are made from plant material, with sound emitted through sound holes. Another link is the ku, the only stringed instrument known to Maori, which is a small musical bow played like a jaws harp (jews harp) using the mouth as a resonating chamber. The idea of ororuarangi, which can be translated as spirit voice (or double stopping in a different context) has had some influence on this piece as in the parallel movement of the strings.

  • Availability

Eve de Castro-Robinson  

Len Songs

Duration: 25' 00" Year: 2003
for mezzo-soprano, clarinet, violin and piano