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Yvette Audain  

A Charleston Kick With Steel Caps

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

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Helen Caskie  

A Cycle of Recollections

Duration: 13' 00" Year: 1997
for soprano, clarinet and piano

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Maria Grenfell  

A Feather of Blue

Duration: 09' 00" Year: 2000
for piano trio

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  • Programme Note

    Commissioned in 2000 by the NZTrio, A Feather of Blue takes its title from a phrase in a poem called A View From A Window by New Zealand writer Kevin Ireland. I have always admired the wry humour and brightness of Kevin Ireland’s writing and many years ago set three of his poems for soprano and mixed ensemble. As a kind gesture Mr Ireland sent me a copy of his book of poems Skinning A Fish, and I was particularly struck by the imagery of colours, flowers, feathers and birds in this poem, which illustrates rain pouring down a window pane and giving way to a burst of sunshine after a storm.

    Maria Grenfell

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Dorothy Ker  

a gentle infinity

Duration: 06' 00" Year: 2009
for full orchestra

Score Sample
  • Instrumentation
    3[1.alto.3/picc]3[1.2.ca]3[1.2.bs cl]3[1.2.contra], 4331, timp., 2 perc., piano/celestra, harp, strings[14.12.10.8.6]
  • Programme Note

    The overall conception of the piece is underpinned by an evolving, wave-like movement – continuous cycles stretching/compressing/proliferating. There is a strong connection to the sea, as in [… and…11], composed in 2002. A passacaglia of seven chords, gradually permutating until they eventually assemble into reverse order, form the ground or ‘canvas’. The various textural and linear surfaces of the piece all emerge from this ground as reflections, extensions, compressions, or distillations of the core material. Quarter-tones (division of the chromatic scale into 24 tones instead of the usual 12) enrich and intensify the harmony while rendering it more tactile and less pitch-defined.


    Review:

    “The 7-minute a gentle infinity…is both atmospheric and deft in Ker’s handling of a large orchestra, subtly dynamic (not least in the use of percussion), edgily communicative, and vibrant in its imagery; a piece full of good things, arguably cut off prematurely. Conducted by Pavel Kotla, the LSO once again suggested that Ker (in attendance) is a composer to watch out for.”

    -Colin Anderson, www.classicalsource.com

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Bryony Jagger  

A New Day Dawns

Duration: 10' 00" Year: 1999
for orchestra

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Eve de Castro-Robinson  

a pink-lit phase

Duration: 10' 00" Year: 1997
for flute, viola and harp

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Philip Norman  

A Short Suite

Duration: 10' 00" Year: 1994
for saxophone quartet

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David Farquhar  

A Short Suite from "Ring Round the Moon"

Duration: 15' 00" Year: 1975
for full orchestra

  • Instrumentation
    2222; 4230; timp, perc; strs.
  • Programme Note

    This music was originally commissioned by Richard Campion for the New Zealand Players’ production of Ring Round the Moon by Jean Ahhouil, translated by Christopher Fry. In the second act there is a ball taking place offstage and demanding a large number of dances which are specified in the text.

    The music was first recorded on acetate discs by a ad hoc orchestra led by Alex Lindsay; these small recordings were then played through speakers for the production, sounding very loud to the cast but filtering out more gently to the audience. At the end of the long national tour, the cast knew the music very well and suggested to me that I should do something with it.

    The result, some years later, 1957, was a suite of nine dances first performed by the Alex Lindsay Orchestra. This rapidly became my most performed piece and was commercially recorded by the Alex Lindsay Orchestra in the 1960s, a recording still available today from Kiwi Pacific Reords.

    Ashley Heenen, through the NZ APRA Committee, commissioned an arrangement for full orchestra for the NZ Youth Orchestra to take on a tour of Europe and China in 1975. This version was shortened to six dances by leaving out the first three numbers. The music has also been used for a ballet, The Wintergarden, choreographed by Arthur Turnbull for the Royal New Zealand Ballet Company – this version included a tenth dance not in the 1957 Suite. Since 1975 two further version have been commissioned: Waltz Suite (1989), for string orchestra (five dances) for the Nova Strings, and an arrangement of the original Dance Suite (1992) for violin and piano (nine dances) for Isador Saslav.

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Chris Watson  

about nothing...really

Duration: 07' 00" Year: 2010
for flute, B flat clarinet, guitar and cello

Score Sample
  • Programme Note

    NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTION 2010: Stop writing dishonest programme notes.

    This work was conceived in the abstract and does not relate to human experience. It does not illustrate the composer’s state of mind, he having suddenly found himself awake in the middle of the night, unable to control his thoughts. While the experience of insomnia, especially when suffered over consecutive nights, can be physically and emotionally crippling, at times the abundance and insistence of multiple streams of unwanted thought (unruly Beta waves) can be, if not pleasurable, then certainly fascinating. This piece does not seek to illustrate this through music, nor does it sonically pose this question: why does the brain seize control of the consciousness and produce such a plethora of unwanted activity that sleep is made impossible and the host becomes miserable?

    At times, certain thoughts seem to somehow rise above the melee of insomniac thought and become quite focused and of seeming import, however inane these might seem in the cold light of day. This is not portrayed in the music by infrequent parings-down of texture and emergence of single, insistent motivic ideas. The music doesn’t describe how such thoughts soon get swallowed up as the jumble of thoughts returns and the victim adjusts position once again, glancing desperately at his or her clock radio and resolving hopelessly to try to make yet another attempt at deep breathing and sheep counting work.

    The composer could claim that the work is about these things, but that would be a lie; he no longer wishes to construct programme notes after the act of composition that conform to some conceivable extra-musical agenda.

    This version of this work is the first of a number of versions, with another swapping cello for viola and another as a solo guitar piece currently projected.

    The work was requested by Dylan Lardelli and is dedicated to this increasingly mythic musician.

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Craig Utting  

Adrift

Duration: 15' 00" Year: 1999
for four cellos

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