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Douglas Lilburn  

Festival Overture

Duration: 08' 00" Year: 1939
for orchestra

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Larry Pruden  

Harbour Nocturne

Duration: 07' 00" Year: 1954
for small orchestra

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Peter Scholes (composer)  

Memory and Desire

Duration: 1h 02' 00" Year: 1997
soundtrack for orchestra from the film of the same name produced by Owen Hughes and directed by Niki Caro

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Douglas Lilburn  

Overture: Aotearoa

Duration: 08' 00" Year: 1940
for orchestra

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Anthony Ritchie  

Southern Journeys

Duration: 30' 00" Year: 2000
four movement orchestral work with video

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  • Programme Note

    New Zealand’s landscape has long been a source of inspiration for artists and composers. I was fortunate enough to have enjoyed frequent trips to the mountains when young, and I still remember them fondly to this day. I have written quite a number of works on the theme of New Zealand’s natural environment. So I was very pleased to be asked by the Dunedin Sinfonia (now Southern Sinfonia) and Natural History New Zealand to compose ‘Southern Journeys’.

    After initial discussions in 1999, I was given freedom to come up with my own ‘synopsis’ for the piece. The music was to be written first, and then recorded by the Dunedin Sinfonia so that images could be put to the music. This was a considerable luxury for the composer, as normally the film is made first and later the music is written to fit the images. Natural History was insistent that I should compose my music without the restriction of specific images, and for that I am very grateful.

    Although Southern Journeys is programmatic, I have attempted to incorporate a symphonic logic into the music. Themes are developed and transformed, and there is an element of cyclic form with the return of the opening theme at the very end of the work. Ideally, the music should be able to stand alone without film, and still make sense.

    The first movement is subtitled ‘Ancient South’ and portrays southern landscape, particularly remote areas such as mountains and sounds. The land is constantly being changed by water, snow and wind, the most dramatic example being the effects of avalanches. In the second movement, ‘Southern Adventures’, humans interact with Nature, at sea, in caves, on rock faces, in the air. Although these adventures are often difficult and treacherous, we feel exhilerated by this risky communion with Nature. The third movement, ‘Seasons in the South’, begins with the stillness of lakes and forests in Autumn, and moves on to explore southern bird and sea life. Winter announces its arrival with a storm, followed by the thawing of snow and ice and the first signs of Spring. The last movement, ‘Our Place’, explores our own environment and contrasts it with the natural environment we have witnessed in the previous movements. A note of caution is sounded: we cannot take the natural beauty of the South for granted. We have to respect and care for it, so as to maintain the balance between our needs and the needs of Nature. At the end of the movement a harmony exists between the beautiful aspects of a city like Dunedin and the natural environment.

    Southern Journeys received financial assistance from the Millennium Fund and Natural History New Zealand.

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John Psathas  

View from Olympus

Duration: 20' 00" Year: 2002
double concerto for percussion, piano and orchestra

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  • Instrumentation
    2222;4331; timp; 2 perc. ( triangle, snare drum, mark tree, glockenspiel, tubular bells, marimba,cowbell, vibraphone, cymbals -splash, medium crash, china crash), bass drum, tambourine, 3 high tom toms (different pitches), finger cymbals; harp; strings; solo piano; solo percussion ( vibraphone, marimba, simtak, dulcimer, bass steel drums, wind chimes (2 or 3 sets), bell tree, mark tree, triangle, finger cymbals, drum station (4 octobans, 4 tom toms, 3 paddle drums, cymbals (trash, splash, medium crash, china crash, plus a cluster of smallest-possible splash cymbals), hi-hat)
  • Programme Note

    I The Furies – The Furies were avenging spirits of retributive justice whose task was to punish crimes outside the reach of human justice. Their names were Alecto, Megæra and Tisiphone. This movement contains an adapted transcription of a fragment of improvised playing by one of my favourite Greek violinists, Stathis Koukoularis (It appears as a solo for violin about 2 minutes into the movement).

    II To Yelasto Paithi (The Smiling Child) – This is the closest I’ve come to expressing – in a way not possible with the spoken or written word – the feelings inspired by my precious children, Emanuel and Zoe. In this movement is also caught the summer I spent working on the concerto at my parents’ house just outside the village of Nea Michaniona – a house perched on a cliff which looks down on the Aegean and up to Mount Olympus.

    III Dance of the Mænads – Draped in the skins of fawns, crowned with wreaths of ivy and carrying the thyrsos – a staff wound round with ivy leaves and topped with a pine cone – the Mænads roamed the mountains and woods, seeking to assimilate the potency of the beasts that dwelled there and celebrating their god Dionysos with song, music and dance. The human spirit demands Dionysiac ecstasy; to those who accept it, the experience offers spiritual power. For those who repress the natural force within themselves, or refuse it to others, it is transformed into destruction, both of the innocent and the guilty. When possessed by Dionysos, the Mænads became savage and brutal. They plunged into a frenzied dance, obtaining an intoxicating high and a mystical ecstasy that gave them unknown powers, making them the match of the bravest hero.

    John Psathas, 2001

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