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David Hamilton  

An Offering for Parihaka

Duration: 14' 00" Year: 1988
for traditional Maori instruments (taonga puoru) and string orchestra

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Anthony Ritchie  

Concertino for Piano and Strings

Duration: 13' 00" Year: 1982

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Eric Biddington  

Concerto for Two Violins and String Orchestra

Duration: 12' 00" Year: 1989

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Nigel Keay  

Diffractions

Duration: 10' 00" Year: 1987
for piano and orchestra

Score Sample
  • Instrumentation
    1111;1110; tamtam; strings (44321)
  • Programme Note

    This musical analogy to the physical phenomenon of light breaking up is written in a pointillistic style, with sinuous melodic fragments leaping across the piano keyboard in jagged cross-rhythmic dancing. Angular counter- melodies are provided by a chamber orchestra of single winds and brass with 14 strings in this single movement.

    The idea of diffractions is represented in sound by the piano, central and prominent, exploiting an aspect of its technique to which it is ideally suited: rapid changes of direction and wide intervallic leaps with extreme dynamics. The orchestra provides bands of coloured spectra forming an integrated texture. The melody, oscillating and colourful is sometimes pointillistic and at other times it flows into longer continuous phrases.

    Diffractions is essentially an abstract work in one continuous movement.

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Lyell Cresswell  

Ixion

Duration: 11' 00" Year: 1989
for orchestra

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Jack Body  

Little Elegies

Duration: 14' 00" Year: 1985
for orchestra

Audio Sample
  • Instrumentation
    (picc)33(ca)3(Eflat, bscl)3(cbsn); 4331; perc (4),cel.,hp,pf; strings
  • Programme Note

    I have many reasons to thank Peter Nisbet, the General Manager of the NZ Symphony, who, through the 70s and 80s, passed a series of commissions my way.

    How privileged I was to be invited to write for the best ensemble in the country! Little Elegies was a particularly prestigious commission, with the concert recorded for telecast to the nation. I successfully argued that my piece, commissioned to mark the 25th anniversary of television in New Zealand, should exploit the medium itself, not simply be a telecast of the orchestral performance. And so, with the help of that wild man of television production, Peter Coates, we produced, at great speed and with few resources, an experimental video that inter-cut slow motion gestures of the conductor with what were sometimes quite harrowing topical television news clips. I don’t recollect what the reaction was to our provocative creation – perhaps nothing more than the Great Silence with which all New Zealand artists are familiar!

    Although this work was commissioned as a celebration, I chose a sombre tone, to draw attention to some of the darker aspects of the popular media, particularly the trivialisation of human tragedy as mass entertainment. I had been deeply shocked after reading Dith Pran’s book The Killing Fields and seeing the movie of the same title, and felt that any kind of personal statement I could make would be insignificant besides the enormity of the horror; hence the ‘littleness’ of my elegies for the suffering of the Cambodian people.

    In its first performance, Little Elegies was conducted by Jose Serebrier.
    (Note by the composer)

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Noel Sanders  

Marram

Duration: 12' 00" Year: 1980, r. 1986
for orchestra

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John Rimmer  

Meeting Place

Duration: 14' 00" Year: 1984
for orchestra, this work, originally written for the Auckland Youth Orchestra and has had many performances throughout New Zealand.

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Jack Body  

Melodies for Orchestra

Duration: 13' 00" Year: 1983

Audio Sample
  • Instrumentation
    3(1pc,1alt.fl)222; 4331; 2perc,pf,hp; strs.
  • Programme Note

    This work reflects my developing interest in the incredible diversity of melodic forms and styles as found outside the traditions of Western art music. The basis of the piece is a series of three transcriptions which I notated from recordings. The first is a Greek fiddle tune Horos Serraborrowed from a recording of Greek folk music; the second is a fragment for solo bamboo flute (saluang) which introduces a kind of sung poetry from West Sumatra; the third Hindi film theme as played by a street band in Pune, India, an ensemble comprising four clarinets, two trumpets and two drums. (The latter two recordings I made my self).

    These transcriptions for orchestra attempt to capture something of the style of playing and timbre of the original performances. Around these more or less literal reproductions I have added an orchestral fabric whose purpose is to create coherence and continuity within the work. I am not able to justify bringing together three different musics which are so unrelated culturally speaking – my intention is simply to try to convey something of the joy and excitement I experienced when I encountered each one for the first time.

    Jack Body, 1983

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John Elmsly  

Neither from nor Towards

Duration: 13' 00" Year: 1980
for string orchestra

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