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Chris Adams  

Antonyms of Trust

Duration: 10' 00" Year: 2010
for actor and orchestra

Alex Taylor  

Attention:

Duration: 09' 00" Year: 2010
for actor and orchestra

  • Instrumentation
    2022; 4331; timp; 2 perc; strings
  • Programme Note

    On May 25 2010, the New Zealand Parliament passed the Sentencing and Parole Reform Bill, also known as “Three Strikes” legislation, sponsored by David Garrett, the ACT Party, and the Sensible Sentencing Trust, and supported by the National Party, under Prime Minister John Key. The law imposes mandatory maximum sentences on offenders who commit three “Strike” offences, removing judicial discretion. An almost identical bill was passed in California in 1994. California’s crime rate remains 11% above the national average, its prison population has increased to nearly 200,000, and its recidivism rate is the highest in the United States.

  • Availability

Lyell Cresswell  

Concerto for Piano and Orchestra

Duration: 30' 00" Year: 2010
for piano and orchestra

  • Programme Note

    The composer writes: "Movements 3, 4, 5 and 6 were written before Edward (Harper) died, but he was already ill with cancer and the whole concerto was written under the shadow of this.

    The first movement, Funeral March, opens with a sequence of low six-note chords in the piano. These chords provide the basis for the complete concerto and are treated in various contrasting ways in each movement. The orchestra becomes an extension of the piano, sustaining these chords and taking them where the piano can’t go. The concerto is not a confrontation between soloist and orchestra – the piano is more like another section of the orchestra. A slow throbbing, but varying, pulse runs through the Funeral March – first in the harp, sometimes the timpani, sometimes pizzicato and, at the climax, with brass and woodwind. In the following tranquil Adagio the six-note chords are turned into serene melodic lines with quiet sustained chords in the strings. The first scherzo is short, fast and restless. The central movement, Addolorato (distressed, grieved, upset), is, in turn, slow and reflective (in the piano), and querulous and disturbing (in the orchestra), posing questions rather than offering solutions. The second scherzo is fast, light and fleeting – with a hushed centre. The second Adagio is composed of slow, unsettled and quiet chords leading to an angry outburst at the climax, and the pace in the final presto is only interrupted briefly with some reference to Adagio 1."

    Extract from a review by Michael Tumelty for “The Herald” in Scotland, 19 March 2012.: “Stars of the night were Lyell Cresswell, for his volcanic, volatile Piano Concerto, and pianist Stephen de Pledge for his powerhouse delivery, with its sledgehammer force and shockingly steel-like clarity in the poignant, reflective moments in the music.”

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M Louise Webster  

Learning to nudge the wind

Duration: 10' 40" Year: 2010
for orchestra

  • Instrumentation
    Piccolo, Flute, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 Bsn, 2 Horns, 2 Trumpets, Timp, Percussion (marimba, susp. cymbal, triangle, tam-tam, metal wind-chimes), strings
  • Programme Note

    Aotearoa is a long narrow land surrounded by sea and buffeted by the wind. We who live here learn to know the direction of the prevailing winds and to track the changes in the sky and on the water. As a child visiting grandparents in Wellington I was mesmerised by the evanescent sweep of wind and wave patterns on the harbour surface as gusts blew silver and black across the water. I listened to the adults talk; they spoke of ‘southerly changes’, of ‘squalls’, and of the wind ‘going around to the south’. A new language that conjured images of a dynamic interchange with the wind. The line ‘learning to nudge the wind’ is taken from a Stella McQueen poem, and captures for me that relationship. ‘Learning to nudge the wind’ was written for St. Matthew’s Chamber Orchestra and had its first performance in May 2010.

  • Availability

Chris Adams  

Progress March

Duration: 08' 00" Year: 2010
for symphonic band

  • Instrumentation
    for picc, 3 fl, ob, 3 cl, bass cl, 2 alto sax, tenor sax, bar sax, 2 hn, 2 tpt, tbn, euph, tuba, timp, 3 perc.
  • Programme Note

    a politically inspired pilgrimage from from naivety to cynicism travelled through wittily twined and increasingly dour revisions of anthems with dwindling heraldic phrases.” – Marian Poole, Otago Daily Times

    When writing Progress March I became increasingly distressed at the direction that the current leadership (NACT) in our country is taking us. The dissolution of elected representatives of Environment Canterbury (ECAN) and power to alter Water Conservation Orders by the government appointed commissioners – all for short-term commercial interests; potential mining of schedule 4 areas of our National parks; the mess that is the Auckland Supercity; continued attacks and underfunding of Radio New Zealand; and a litany of other abuses by our supposedly representative politicians have all saddened me. Progress March celebrates greed and misuse of power using original material as well as fragments of God Defend New Zealand, the Star Spangled Banner and Sumer is Icomen In, a 13th Century song celebrating the bucolic joys associated with the arrival of summer.

    Chris Adams

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Anthony Ritchie  

Symphony No. 3

Duration: 30' 00" Year: 2010
for full orchestra

  • Programme Note

    Symphony No. 3 was composed as part of Anthony Ritchie’s work as senior lecturer in composition at the University of Otago, in Dunedin, New Zealand. It was written over a period of two years between 2008-2010, without a specific orchestra in mind. It will be recorded by the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra under conductor, Tecwyn Evans, in 2010, as part of a CD of Anthony Ritchie’s orchestral compositions. The premiere live performance will take place in The Otago Festival of Arts, October 2010, with the Southern Sinfornia orchestra in Dunedin. The composer wishes to acknowledge the support of the University of Otago in writing this symphony.

    This symphony is a portrayal of two sides of human personality, represented by the two movements of the work: ‘Up’ and ‘Down’. The music depicts the constant struggle to find balance in one’s life, in terms of mood and relationship with other people.

    Broadly speaking, ‘Up’ is active, busy, bright in mood. Musical motifs and themes emphasize upward progressions, while the orchestration is lively and colourful. Full of blazing brass and high-pitched woodwind, ‘Up’ is associated with images of the sun, and outdoors activity. Percussion play an important role rhythmically, especially the combination of log drum and tom toms. Eventually the lively character of the music loses control, leading to a riotous climax involving the percussion and full orchestra in unison. The music disintegrates into a short oasis of calm, before the busy mood is gradually reestablished, and brings the movement to a bright end, on a D Lydian chord.

    ‘Down’, by contrast, is melancholic, slow and mournful in mood. If ‘Up’ is associated with the sun, then ‘Down’ is associated with Saturn. There is also reference made to Durer’s famous woodcut, Melancholia (1514), in which a magic square appears. The numbers on this square are used to generate themes and ideas in this movement – the opening piccolo melody, underpinned by wispy strings, for example. A second theme, featuring tuba and bass trombone, refers to a ‘tuatara’ teme written by the composer in 1991, and here is ponderous in tone. Following a gradual buildup a faster section emerges, full of tension and unresolved progressions. The angry protests subside, and a mysterious passage recaps the first theme, accompanied by constantly shifting strings. Out of the depths emerges a bass clarinet, playing a bird-like theme, which is picked up by the other woodwinds in a fugue, which refers back to the earlier quick section. After a brief silence, the second theme reappears but this time in a passionate, full-blooded version that leads to a tense climax. The music searches for resolution, and eventually finds it in a lyrical coda for strings alone, to start with. Themes from earlier in the symphony are transformed and the overall key centre, D, is hinted at but never quite reached. The chiming of a clock suggests the never-ending passing of time, and the log drum, so prominent in the first movement, returns to conclude the work.

  • Availability

Robbie Ellis  

The Lover's Knot

Duration: 11' 00" Year: 2010
for orchestra and actor

  • Instrumentation
    2 fl, 2 ob (2nd doubling c.a.), 2 cl, bsn, cbsn 4 hn, 3 tpt, 2 tbn, b.tbn, tba timp, 2 perc (Triangle, Mark Tree, Large Metal Oil Barrel, Clash Cymbals, Wooden Floor, Sleigh Bells, Suspended Cymbal, Snare Drum, Bass Drum) harp, strings
  • Programme Note

    Walter Bolton was the last man executed for murder in New Zealand, hanged at Mt Eden Prison on 18 February 1957. He was convicted of poisoning his wife Beatrice with arsenic on their Whanganui farm.

    The story of his trial, questionable guilt and subsequent execution continues to raise many questions. Is it right to take a person’s life in exchange for another? What if society’s judgement was wrong? Would our society have made the same judgement today?

    But even more compelling than these moral questions is why a man like Walter Bolton would have been driven to murder in the first place. The prosecution contended that he had deliberately put sheep dip in her food; however arsenic was also found in the farm’s water supply – probably because it had leeched in from the normal daily use of that same sheep dip. The clincher for the jury’s guilty verdict was Walter’s admission that he had been having an affair with his sister-in-law, Florence – salacious but ultimately only circumstantial evidence. The decision to execute him was rushed: the trial took place shortly before Christmas 1956 and the judge and jury would have felt pressed to make it home to their families. Up until his death, Walter continued to maintain his innocence. Florence, a spinster, committed suicide soon after his execution and was rumoured to have left a note admitting to the killing.

    This combination of our script and music is a fictionalised interpretation of these historical circumstances. We have put Walter Bolton in his Mt Eden Prison cell in the early dawn hours before his execution. His mind wanders to his deceased wife Beatrice, his lover Florence, and the grotesque pantomime of the judicial system as he saw it. In The Lover’s Knot, he awaits the hangman’s noose.

  • Availability

Andrew Perkins  

The Radish and the Shoe

Duration: 16' 00" Year: 2010
for narrator and orchestra

  • Instrumentation
    Piccolo, Flute, Oboe, Cor Anglais, Bb Clarinet, Bass Clarinet, Bassoon, Contra-bassoon, 4 Horns in F, 3 Trumpets, two Trombones, Bass Trombone, Tuba, Timpani, Vibraphone, Congas, Snare Drum, Harp, Narrator, Strings.
  • Programme Note

    The story of “The Radish and the Shoe” was created by French Canadian artist Louise Jalbert and set to music by Andrew Perkins. Jalbert’s book won the Parents’ Choice Award when it was first published in California in 1984 and has since been republished. The characters, a Radish, a Shoe and a group of Letters, all reside inside a book which they call their home. One day a pair of scissors attacks the book, destroying the characters’ home, leaving them completely despondent. However, they pick themselves up and repair their book, and in the process inadvertently transform their ‘home’ into something more beautiful than before. The story is cleverly analogous with survival in the real world and one that has always rung resonances with the philosophical approach to life Andrew Perkins has always attempted to instill in his students.

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