Search Music:

This song cycle for soprano and piano has texts by the composer in Maori and English.

“Awa Herea memorably evokes the physical appearance of symbolic significance of these braided rivers… cosmic weather-driven energy.” (Covell, Sydney Morning Herald).

“Its pace was shrewdly varied and the music encompassed a range of styles – from sung declamation to florid lyricism – without incongruity.” (Jack, Independent).

“The cycle displays all the characteristics of her [Gillian Whitehead’s] mature work. The vocal line is at once exultant and contemplative, the piano writing incisive or lulling; the formal shaping novel yet accessible. It is a memorable piece, filled with the energetic spirit of the natural world and finding through that spirit its own serenity.”

• Whitehead: Awa Herea; computer-set 

  Full score | Pdf - computer set
  

• Whitehead: Awa Herea; computer-set 

  Full score | Hardcopy - computer set
  
  $22.50
  • • Quantity:
  • Borrow

• Whitehead: Awa Herea; facsimile 

  Full score | Hardcopy - facsimile
  
  • Borrow

• NZIAF: Gillian Whitehead Portrait; part 2 

  CD
  

• Waikohu: Mere Boynton and Friends 

  CD
  
  $30.00
  • • Quantity:
  • Borrow

• Tracey Chadwell's Songbook  Year: 1995 

  CD
  
  • Borrow

• Ears Wide Open Taringa Areare Education Resource CD  Year: 2000 

  CD
  
  • Borrow

This dance theatre project was commissioned to celebrate the New Zealand Women’s Suffrage Centennial, and explores a range of historical and contemporary issues. It is based on documents written by Kate Shepherd and was choreographed by Susan Jordan.

• Fisher: Bone of Contention; facsimile 

  Full score | Pdf - facsimile
  

• Fisher: Bone of Contention (excerpt); facsimile 

  Full score | Hardcopy - facsimile
  
  $21.00
  • • Quantity:
  • Borrow

• Helen Fisher: Bone of Contention  Year: 1993 

  Cassette
  
  • Borrow

The Flute Concerto was composed for flautist Alexa Still in 1993 while Ritchie was Composer-in-Residence with the Southern Sinfonia. Unlike the Symphony “Boum”, written in the same year, this Concerto is a generally happy and open-sounding work, and reflects aspects of Alexa Still’s personality as well as her playing. She first performed the concerto on September 4th, 1993 in The Glenroy Auditorium, and subsequently recorded it with The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra.

The first movement is energetic in style, with a bubbling first theme. This is contrasted by a darker and slower second theme, exploring the lower register of the flute. The music accelerates back to the main theme before heading into a percussive middle section. The flute then presents a lyrical idea that is related to earlier themes, and this leads to a cadenza. A brief recapitulation drives the music to a forceful ending.

The slow second movement is lyrical and improvisational in style, and begins with a solo for bass clarinet. A warm and gentle theme appears, followed by a short cadenza for flute. The orchestra returns with a fuller version of the theme, but it soon fades into anxious repeated chords on the oboes and bassoon while the flute plays nervous, flickering gestures. As the tension dissolves the clarinet introduces a laconic theme, interspersed with little cadenzas on the flute. The music builds to a climax where the main theme returns in a contrapuntal version, again fading into the anxious chords. A brief and mysterious coda contains references back to the opening cadenza, and the movement ends unresolved.

The third movement is like a sequence of dances with different characters, bound together by a buffeting crotchet rhythm. After a flourish from the orchestra, the flute introduces a sprightly theme, followed by a quirky, subsidiary idea. The buffeting rhythm from the start is transformed into a pop-styled ostinato pattern, and the flute plays a lyrical melody above it. This theme was inspired by the composer attending a performance by The Muttonbirds, a well-known NZ rock group. The quirky theme returns in a more subdued setting, the music slows, and unexpectedly becomes a dreamy and child-like waltz. This distraction is swept away by a loud chord, and the main theme returns with renewed purpose, leading to an exciting conclusion in which all the elements of the movement are combined.

The Flute Concerto was recorded by Alexa Still and the NZSO in 1996, on the Koch CD 3-7345-2-H1, entitled ‘Kiwi Flute’. The second movement of the concerto was published in a special version for piano and flute by the Centre for NZ Music, in their 1998 publication Little Dancings: A Selection of flute music by New Zealand Composers.

• Ritchie: Flute Concerto (hire set); computer set 

  Score and parts | Hardcopy - computer set
  
  • Hire

• Ritchie A.: Flute Concerto; facsimile 

  Piano reduction | Hardcopy - facsimile
  
  • Borrow

• Ritchie, A.: Flute Concerto; computer-set  Year: 2009 

  Full score | Hardcopy - computer set
  
  $85.00
  • • Quantity:
  • Borrow

• Orchestra Reading Panel 1 

  Cassette
  
  • Borrow

• Kiwi Flute  Year: 1995 

  CD
  
  • Borrow

• Remember Parihaka - orchestral music by Anthony Ritchie  Year: 2009 

  CD
  
  $30.00
  • • Quantity:
  • Borrow

This lament for unaccompanied mezzo-soprano is to a text by Harjo.
“The simple image of one woman onstage, barefoot, letting loose great octave leaps and glissandos peaking in sharp cries, projected a beautifully unfettered freedom.”
Cahill, Berkeley Express

• Lockwood: I give you back; facsimile 

  Full score | Hardcopy - facsimile
  
  $6.50
  • • Quantity:
  • Borrow

• NZ Women Composers Vol. 2 

  CD
  

• Lesbian American Composers   Year: 1997 

  CD
  
  • Borrow

• Palmer, Juliet Kiri: Selected Works II 

  CD
  
  • Borrow

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.

• Ritchie A: Symphony No. 1 - 'Boum'; facsimile 

  Full score | Pdf - facsimile
  

• Ritchie A.: Symphony - Boum; facsimile 

  Full score | Hardcopy - facsimile
  
  $50.00
  • • Quantity:
  • Borrow

• Anthony Ritchie: Symphony "Boum" 

  Cassette
  
  • Borrow

• Anthony Ritchie: Symphonies 1 and 2  Year: 2007 

  CD
  
  $30.00
  • • Quantity:
  • Borrow