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Eric Biddington  

Cashmere Dances

Duration: 14' 00" Year: 1990
a suite of four dances for orchestra

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Craig Utting  

Cirrus

Duration: 10' 00" Year: 2002
for orchestra

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Anthony Young  

Concertino for Orchestra

Duration: 10' 00" Year: 2005, r. 2010

Score Sample
  • Instrumentation
    22*22; 4331; timp., perc. (2 or 3), hp; strings
  • Programme Note

    This piece is affectionately known as ‘Bugs’ or ‘the Bug piece’ to me, and that is what it is about: the wonderful creepy crawlies native to New Zealand. Motivation for writing this piece came from two sources. As part of my residency with the Auckland Philharmonia in 2004, I was required to write a piece for a concert specifically at children and families. Naturally, it needed simple structures, lots of energy and a bit of fun.

    The second motivation with regard to a specific programme was a love for all native New Zealand fauna, and not just beautiful birds. So much music has been written with bird song or in celebration of New Zealand’s landscape. But nothing to my knowledge had been written about the humble creatures which often inspire revulsion rather than awe. Despite their not so cuddly appearance, native insects and invertebrates are just as fascinating and unique to these islands of ours as any other endemic wildlife.

    The first movement is Giant Weta. Often the most notorious for exciting disgust, these magnificent insects are quite amazing, but all to often fall prey to introduced mammals.

    The second movement is titled Giant Snails. Native giant snails are enormous, and often live in kauri trees, or feed on giant earthworms on the forest floor.

    The Nelson Cave Spider is a extremely unique creature. Like so many other creatures and plant life of New Zealand, it is a relic of ancient times and preserved by New Zealand’s isolation.

    Finally, perhaps the most unusual of all is the Peripatus, sometimes known as the velvet worm, a blue centipede-like creature that crawls through undergrowth in search of prey.

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Kenneth Young  

Dance

Duration: 14' 00" Year: 1997
for orchestra

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Lyell Cresswell  

Dancing on a Volcano

Duration: 12' 00" Year: 1996
for orchestra

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Douglas Lilburn  

Drysdale Overture

Duration: 10' 00" Year: 1937
for orchestra

Audio Sample
  • Instrumentation
    2222; 3230; timp, perc; strs.
  • Programme Note

    When I arrived at the Royal College of Music in London, in September 1937, and was accepted as a student by Vaughan Williams, he put me through routine disciplines of writing fugues and part-songs, and then one day said: “Isn’t it time you composed something?”

    I accepted the challenge and produced by Drysdale Overture, with its nostalgic memories in a musical language which rather disconcerted him. Still more did it upset Sir George Dyson, who brilliantly realised my rough orchestral score on the piano and then said: “Don’t bring me another manuscript like that.” He did, however, give it a reading rehearsal with the RCM first orchestra, and I took steps to improve my musical handwriting.

    In those far-off heady days, Hans Keller’s “functional analysis” had hardly impacted on the RCM – we students ignorantly and derisively called it “sweet FA”. And so I may hardly provide an “analytical synopsis”.

    With my meagre knowledge of classical forms, I thought that proper overtures should have a solemn introduction, with motifs recalled later in various structural guises, and that they should have a contrasting “second object” – hence my nostalgic oboe tune, with fitting Scottish inflections. Curiously, what might have been a routine “development” turned into a sunlit rondo, nostalgic of childhood happiness.

    I’m left with that lovely Mark Twain image of Jim and Huckleberry drifting on their barge down that great river, looking up at the stars and wondering “whether they was made, or only just happened”.

    Douglas Lilburn
    14 October 1994

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Daniel Stabler  

eccco fantasy for orchestra

Duration: 11' 00" Year: 2002, r. 2005
for orchestra

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Chris Adams  

Elegy (for a world obsessed with violence)

Duration: 10' 00" Year: 2002
one movement work for orchestra

  • Instrumentation
    3*3*33; 4331; timp, 2p, cel, hp, string
  • Programme Note

    Elegy is my personal reflection on the events of September 11th, 2001, their aftermath and the fixation on and use of violence in our global culture. Although the piece took me just over six months to complete, I started writing it shortly after the attacks on the Twin Towers. I was living in Wells, and was physically very distanced from the events that the world observed taking place in America and later in Afghanistan, Bali, Guantanamo Bay, Iraq and Spain. In this piece, I am exploring both the horrific tragedy of the situation, and the American response to that day. It is an emotional response to the tragedy and not in any way programmatic. Essentially Elegy is a work full of hope. Hope that it is possible to find better ways to resolve conflict within our world. Hope that it is possible for different cultures and beliefs to coexist with understanding and tolerance for others. Hope that people will not see everything as black and white with only one right way or answer and not be influenced by ignorance or greed.

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David Hamilton  

Elysian Fields

Duration: 13' 00" Year: 1998
for orchestra

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Anthony Ritchie  

French Overture

Duration: 12' 00" Year: 2008
for full orchestra

Score Sample
Audio Sample
  • Instrumentation
    1 flute, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, strings
  • Programme Note

    French Overture was composed for The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra on request from conductor Tecwyn Evans, for inclusion in the 2009 tour of the North Island. It is scored for a Classical sized orchestra, and adopts the structure of the French Baroque overture: slow-fast-slow. Some features in the music also suggest a neo-classical character, such as stern dotted rhythms at the start and a fugato section in the quick section.


    The composer wrote this overture while on study leave in Paris, and it is informed by some of his experiences in that city: the plethora of ancient buildings and sites, the noise and bustle of the place, the people living on the streets. At one point a strange waltz emerges, reminiscent of music from an organ grinder. Another feature is a long, climbing melody on violins near the start of the overture, which represents the eye’s search for light in Paris. Surrounded by tall apartments, we have to look up to see beyond them, something a New Zealander is not used to doing. There is elegance in Paris but there is also a tough and forbidding quality that makes a strong impression on someone from a small, unpopulated country. When the stern opening returns late in the piece it finally subsides into something softer and more human, a folk-like version of the climbing melody, which now descends peacefully into a quiet timpani solo at the end.

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