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Douglas Lilburn  

A Birthday Offering

Duration: 11' 00" Year: 1956
for orchestra

John Ritchie  

Concertino for Clarinet and String Orchestra

Duration: 14' 00" Year: 1957

Larry Pruden  

Dances of Brittany

Duration: 10' 00" Year: 1956
for string orchestra

Edwin Carr  

Night Music

Duration: 12' 00" Year: 1958
scherzo for orchestra

Edwin Carr  

Organ Sonata

Duration: 12' 00" Year: 1958

Edwin Carr  

Sonata No.1

Duration: 12' 00" Year: 1955
for piano

  • Programme Note

    “During two years of study in Rome, with Petrassi at the Conservatorio di Santa, I had scholarships to attend the famous summer school at the Academia Chigiana in Siena. During the second one in 1955, this sonata was composed in the space of ten days and performed by the New York pianist Leonard Mastrogiacomo (first two movements) and his fiancee Eleanor (last movement). The same two pianists performed the work in Rome shortly afterwards.”

    The Sonata has been performed by Gordon Watson, Malcolm Binns ad Margaret Kitchin on the BBC.

  • Availability

Douglas Lilburn  

Three Poems of the Sea

Duration: 10' 00" Year: 1958
for strings and narrator

Douglas Lilburn  

Three Songs for Baritone and Viola

Duration: 10' 00" Year: 1958

  • Programme Note

    Lilburn composed these songs in 1958 for the baritone Donald Munro and his wife the violist Jean McCartney, who gave the first broadcast performance.

    The influence of serialism on the composer’s style at this point in his career makes for a challenging vocal line, especially in the first two songs. Nonetheless, Lilburn’s work capitalizes on the affinities between voice and viola, and exploits technical capabilities of the viola to evoke moods rather than painting the words. In the penultimate verse of “Warning of Winter”, for example, the viola’s wavering line, thickened with chords, heralds the darkness of winter that “descends the flowered pathway”. Such subtle evocation of the text is also found in “Blow, Wind of Fruitfulness”. Here the viola’s wide leaps to high trills are to be executed with the bow placed over the fingerboard; this evokes the troubling paradoxes of spring, the “Birds that are silent now/And buds of barren springing”. Between these bleak poles, the viola and voice pairing are used with bold irony in “Song of Allegiance”. This march is a poet’s humble yet robust reflection on his own position in comparison to the poetic geniuses of the past. Again Lilburn enlists the viola to speak with and as the poet: wide intervals, tense chords, and motivic stutters convey a poetic voice that is “cracked and harsh”.

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Douglas Lilburn  

Wind Quintet

Duration: 11' 00" Year: 1957
for flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn