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Nigel Keay  

At the Hawk's Well

Duration: 55' 00" Year: 1991
opera in one act

  • Instrumentation
    2 sopranos playing percussion; 1 bass playing percussion; Bass; Tenor; Dancer; women's chorus; flute, alto flute, clarinet in A, bass clarinet, bassoon; horn, trombone, bass trombone; timpani, piano; strings (including solo electric violin); Percussion: Javanese drums, bass drum, tamtam and optional Javanese gong, gender, slentem, kempul.
  • Programme Note

    An operatic setting of the dance-play by W.B. Yeats which is also performable as a dramatic cantata in a concert version. This is a one-act work and is ritualistic in nature reflecting Yeats’ modeling of the text on the Japanese Noh play. The music is at times dark and atmospherlc, and the archetypal symbolism and metaphysical suggestion of the text, wlth its archaic language and bleak images, is a rich source of inspiration for this. The musical language is comprehensive with tonality and atonality used in conjunction with each other to express literary ideas. Written for five solo singers with the main roles being a tenor and a bass, and a dancer, the backing ii provided by a 30 or so piece orchestra including piano, solo electric violin, and gamelan instruments.
    (Programme note from composer’s website)

  • Availability

Helen Fisher  

Bone of Contention

Duration: 1h 20' 00" Year: 1993
a dance work for mezzo-soprano and ensemble

Philip Norman  

Peter Pan

Duration: 1h 27' 00" Year: 1999
music for orchestra for a 3-act ballet

  • Programme Note

    This work was commissioned and premiered by The Royal New Zealand Ballet at the Westpac Trust St James Theatre, Wellington on February 27, 1999.

    Through most of 1998, the commissioned creative team including composer Philip Norman, choreographer Russell Kerr and designer Kristian Fredrikson worked on the adaptation of James M Barrie’s enchanting story. “We ate, slept and dreamt crocodiles, pirates and mermaids.”

  • Availability

Tecwyn Evans  

Symphony - Organ

Duration: 53' 00" Year: 1995
for full orchestra and organ

Anthony Ritchie  

Symphony No. 1 - 'Boum'

Duration: 32' 00" Year: 1993
for full orchestra

  • Instrumentation
    (1)222(1)alto sax2; 4231; perc; timp; strings
  • Programme Note

    The title of this symphony comes from the ominous tam tam stroke that opens the first movement, a mysterious sound heard by two of E M Forster’s characters in A Passage to India when they investigate the Marabar Caves. This is a sound which symbolises the mysteries of life and death, although Ritchie warns us not to take it all too literally. “The echo is only a starting point to a general theme of human struggle. The listener can interpret the music in his or her own way.”

    The first movement opens sonorously in the tonality of G, pulsating chords leading us inevitably to the first main theme, a theme that Ritchie himself characterises as a “muscular, Brucknerian theme”, although the momentum that it engages owes more to Shostakovich. A sinuous saxophone theme is very significant in the central section, as is the lengthy oboe theme in the moderato section. The second movement opens with the sharp, bright sounds of oboes and clarinets accompanied by Cook Islands log drums. The log drum punctuates the movement’s textures and creates a sense of propulsion. A light-hearted dance introduced by string quartet offers an opportunity for a change of mood. The third movement is a lament for the victims of the Bosnian wars.

    The highly evocative scoring of the opening pages was inpsired by the wailing of a Maori karanga, while tolling bells imbue this elegy with a special sense of tragedy. The symphony ends with a ‘grand dance’ which shows Ritchie has not been untouched by rock music. Several themes are brought together in an ecstatic coda, after which the music slowly unwinds over a reiterated pedal note. The opening of the first movement returns, and the final sound we hear is a single stroke on the tam tam.

    Symphony No.1 ‘Boum’ was completed while Ritchie was Composer-in-residence with the Dunedin Sinfonia in 1993, and first performed the following year, under the baton of Sir William Southgate. It has received numerous performances, and was recorded for radio by the NZSO, in 1998, Auckland Philharmonia in 1996, Dunedin Sinfonia in 1994.

  • Availability

Helen Fisher  

Taku Wana - The Enduring Spirit

Duration: 1h 02' 00" Year: 1997
for SATB choir, kapa haka, Maori and Irish instruments, 3 soloists and orchestra

Dorothy Buchanan  

The Daughters of the Late Colonel

Duration: 33' 00" Year: 1998
a short opera in one act

Anthony Ritchie  

The Trapeze Artists

Duration: 35' 00" Year: 1996
chamber opera for soprano, alto, baritone

Helen Fisher  

The Wheel Turns

Duration: 36' 00" Year: 1999
for soprano, flute/piccolo, piano and cello

Helen Fisher  

Wahine Toa (Strong Women)

Duration: 1h 00' 00" Year: 1992
a dance work for flute duo and SATB choir