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Philip Brownlee  

As if to catch the fleeting tail of time

Duration: 16' 00" Year: 2009
for guitar and ensemble

David Farquhar  

Concerto

Duration: 18' 00" Year: 1992
for guitar and chamber orchestra

  • Instrumentation
    1110; 1000; Perc.; strings (clar. in A)
  • Programme Note

    The Concerto was commissioned by Matthew Marshall and the Wellington Regional Orchestra (now Vector Wellington Orchestra), completed in May 1992 for a first performance planned for November 1992, and later postponed until May 1993.

    This work is in three movements (quick – slow – quick), but these are connected by cadenza-like links for the guitar soloist, so that the music is continuous. In view of the balance problems in a guitar concerto I have written for a small orchestra (flute, oboe, clarinet, horn, percussion and strings), and treated the relationship between solo and orchestra in a concertante style – sharing material rather than opposing each other, and aiming throughout to make the guitar easily audible. Dance rhythms, with touches of rhumba and jazz, predominate in the quick movements, while the slow central movement uses variable speed tremolo on the guitar to enhance its singing qualities.

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Eric Biddington  

Concerto for Flute and String Orchestra

Duration: 15' 00" Year: 1987
for flute and string orchestra

David Farquhar  

Concerto for Wind Quintet

Duration: 17' 00" Year: 1966
for flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon and horn

John Rimmer   Richard Nunns  

Cosmic Winds

Duration: 15' 00" Year: 2004
for traditional Maori instruments (taonga puoro) and tape

John Rimmer  

Crow

Duration: 17' 00" Year: 1991
for oboe and electronic sounds

Anthony Ritchie  

Double Concerto for bass clarinet and cello

Duration: 19' 00" Year: 1999

  • Instrumentation
    2222; 2200; 2 perc (bass drum, side drum, glock, xylophone, sus. cymbal, strings (87652 approx)
  • Programme Note

    The Double Concerto was designed to explore the unusal combination of solo instruments, extend the soloists and, at the same time, be performable by regional orchestras.

    The opening movement has a lilting quality and is based on the Brahms’ lullaby, which only appears (abridged) at the end, played on glockenspiel. The three themes that appear in this movement are related, in some way, to this lullaby. The movement is dedicated to my daughter Annabelle, who was born some months before the composition of this work. A short melody based on letters from her name (A-A-B-E-E) is played by the soloists in the coda.

    By contrast, the second movement is fast and jagged, with a somewhat playful second theme shared between the soloists and woodwinds. The main theme has a toccata-like quality, and builds up to a strong conclusion.

    Whereas birth was the theme behind the first movement, it is death that concerns the third, and in particular the sudden death of a close friend and musician, Angela Campbell, at the time of writing this concerto. It is an intimate piece for the two soloists only, and based on letters from Angela’s name (A-G-E-A) which are heard at the beginning as a recurrent bass line. The cello melody at the start is a variation on a melody from the first movement, suggesting birth and death are inextricably linked.

    The mood lightens in the finale which is a slightly bizarre waltz based on two contrasting themes. Near the end, the soloists have a cadenza which flows into the coda uninterrupted.

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John Elmsly  

Drift

Duration: 16' 00" Year: 1994
for viola and tape

  • Programme Note

    The electronic part for this work was prepared in the computer music studio of Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, using real-time granular synthesis to process samples produced by the viola. A small resource of bowed and plucked sounds has been treated in this way to produce a large-scale mosaic of sounds to background the solo viola part, which explores playing techniques involving small changes, drifts, in pitch. For instance the opening is played with the fingers in closer than normal position to produce rhythmic patterns on very small intervals, a technique which recurs as a sort of technical motto throughout, and later material makes considerable use of much larger slides to produce a very fluid melody in the upper reaches of the instrument.

    The first performance was given by violist David Nalden in the
    ExtravaCANZa festival at Victoria University of Wellington in November 1994. David Nalden describes ‘Drift’ as ‘a vast soundscape of seemingly infinite varieties of colour, pitch and rhythm which bore as much resemblance to the sequence of sounds in my initial recording as a luxuriant garden to a handful of seeds which had given it its existence.’

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Gillian Whitehead  

Hinetekakara

Duration: 16' 00" Year: 2004
for voice, taonga puoro, and bassoon

  • Instrumentation
    Voice used for waiata; Taonga puoro includes: Putatara, Putorino Matai, Pumotomoto, Pupuharakeke, Pu Kaea, and Nguru Rakau Maire
  • Programme Note

    Hinetekakara is the ancestress of Aroha Yates-Smith, the kaikaranga (singer) who provided the idea and the text of this piece. Hinetekakara lived on the shores of Lake Rotorua with Ihenga, her husband or father, an eponymous ancestor of the Te Arawa people, when the land was still being settled after the arrival of the Te Arawa canoe from central Polynesia. The four cadenzas, for bassoon, alto flute, flute, cello and bassoon, and bassoon link improvised sections, in which all the instruments participate. The singer initially invokes, accompanied by putatara (conch shell trumpet), the spirit of Hinetekakara, then addresses rituals following the death of her future father-in-law (with putorino), and then the birth of her son (with pumotomoto, an instrument used to assist at child-birth). A voiceless improvisation on pupu harakeke (flax snail), an instrument presaging danger, is followed by Ihenga’s anguished lament as he finds the murdered body of Hinetekakara by the lake, by the place named for her, Ohinemutu, meaning the end of the woman. Finally, she is farewelled as her spirit returns to the afterworld.

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Juliet Palmer  

How it Happened

Duration: 15' 00" Year: 2010
for narrator and ensemble

  • Instrumentation
    for bass clarinet in Bb, alto flute
    percussion — kick-drum, snare drum, low tom-tom, low woodblock, high woodblock, medium cowbell (muted), hi-hat, high ride cymbal, medium splash cymbal, thin metal sheet, cabasa, rainstick, tibetan bowl (F if possible), vibraphone, marimba;
    narrator — amplified with microphone and/or paper megaphone and power megaphone;
    piano (nylon fishing line rosined), violin and violoncello
  • Programme Note

    “In the beginning, there was nothing. Just the water.”
    “But where did all the water come from?”

    Throughout Thomas King’s novel the character of the trickster Coyote reappears, hopelessly bamboozled, trying to learn what really happened when the world began. Who knows the Real Story? Coyote would like to think he does, but then there’s Coyote’s Dream – “gets loose and runs around. Makes a lot of noise”. Coyote’s Dream has his own idea about things: “I’m in charge of the world”. By the end of the piece, you’ll be wondering where all that water came from…

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