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Douglas Lilburn  

'Six Short Pieces'

Duration: 07' 00" Year: 1962
for piano

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Dorothy Buchanan  

3 Sketches for Wind Octet

Duration: 09' 00" Year: 1981
for wind octet

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Juliet Palmer  

5 Cactus Dreams

Duration: 05' 00" Year: 1988
for voice and chamber ensemble

  • Instrumentation
    vocalist, oboe, tenor saxophone, viola, cello, cactus and camera flash. Performed in darkness with light flashes to trigger each movement - performers also walk while playing.
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Alex Taylor  

[f]at[on]ality

Duration: 05' 00" Year: 2009, r. 2010
for piano

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  • Programme Note

    The title itself is a play on the words “fatality” and “tonality”, the two words and concepts colliding to form “[f]at[on]ality”. Similarly, the music presents two contrasting musical languages that intersect and compete violently for dominance. The first of these is a tonal language, represented by various types of (major/minor etc.) chords derived from four constituent triads of a twelve-tone row. The first phrase presents this language in conflict with itself, collapsing two triads into a hexachord at the punctuation points of the phrase. These chords then begin to extricate and extrapolate themselves, – beginning in the right hand at the start of the second phrase – under which the twelve-tone row (presented in the accelerating and decelerating lines of the first phrase) is fragmented and rhythmically manipulated. This twelve-tone row represents the second musical language, that is, a quasi-serial atonal language that is subjected to transformation by inversion, retrograde, multiplication etc. While on one level the music is concerned with the intersection and interdependence of these languages, it is also concerned with the dramatic consequences of that collision. The dynamic and rhythmic frameworks are somewhat extreme, providing a constantly surging, climactic structure that, in the end, resolves ambivalently. The inspiration for the piece came from a poetic doodle, reprinted below:

    con.vent.shun

    wanting to dis / dys
    place / figure / function

    this fatal tonality
    tonal fatality
    total finality
    final totality

    this [f]at[on]al entity

    cacophonic / catatonic
    coughed up and codified

    maybe some kind of
    superficial facticity / deep fiction
    palimpsestic / incestuous

    stasis / stagnation
    repetitious f[l/r]agellation
    sheer f[l/r]agrance

    and you can’t get out

    or in

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Anthony Ritchie  

A Bugle will Do

Duration: 09' 00" Year: 1995
for full orchestra

Audio Sample
  • Instrumentation
    pc2233cb; 2331; timp.; 3 perc (triangle, tomtoms, bass drum, suspended cymbal, xylophone, tam tam, log drum); strs
  • Programme Note

    In 1995 I was approached by the NZSO to write an overture to commemorate the recent death of New Zealand’s most famous war hero, Sir Charles Upham. Upham was famous for having won the Victoria Cross twice for bravery during World War II. He was, however, extremely modest when it came to discussing his achievements. Some years before his death it was suggested to Upham that he have a state funeral; he simply replied, “A bugle will do”. This comment seemed like a good starting point for my piece.

    There are no bugles in the orchestra, but the opening section depicting the horrors of battle contains plenty of brass. Sub-titled Maleme and Ruweisat Ridge, the music is fast and furious, built from several motifs, and includes the opening rhythm for the most well known Maori haka (war dance), Kamate, kamate. The music builds to a climax, and the scene changes to a bleak Colditz Castle, where Upham was imprisoned during the war. While in prison he dreams of rural NZ, and the farm near Kaikoura called ‘Landsdowne’, where he eventually settled after the war. This brief pastoral section links into a coda celebrating the outbreak of peace. Motifs from earlier in the piece return but changed into brighter modes. ’

    A Bugle Will Do was first performed by the NZSO in 1996 under Andrew Sewell, and was subsequently performed in the USA.

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John Rimmer  

A Cambridge Canzona

Duration: 05' 00" Year: 1961, r. 2008
for brass quintet (orchestral instruments)

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John Rimmer  

A Cambridge Canzona

Duration: 05' 00" Year: 1961, r. 2008
for brass quintet (brass band instruments)

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Craig Utting  

A Celebration

Duration: 07' 00" Year: 1988
for large orchestra

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Yvette Audain  

A Charleston Kick With Steel Caps

Duration: 06' 00" Year: 2011
for saxophone quartet

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Yvette Audain  

A Charleston Kick With Steel Caps – alto sax quartet version

Duration: 06' 00" Year: 2011
for four alto saxophones

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