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Bryony Jagger  

A New Day Dawns

Duration: 10' 00" Year: 1999
for orchestra

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Lissa Meridan  

a quiet fury

Duration: 10' 00" Year: 2008
for symphony orchestra and live electronics

  • Programme Note

    During 2007 I spent a lot of time making field recordings of background noise in Paris, and analysing the spectral and rhythmic content of those recordings. I found the more I listened to my recordings, the more musical material I found hidden in these background hisses and hums, chatterings and otherwise banal noises: rhythms, mysterious melodies, energies and harmonic tensions. While working on this commission for the NZSO, I decided to try to capture the intrinsic musical essences I could hear in my field recordings, and interpret those sounds in an orchestral context, with the juxtaposition of the original noise recordings finding musical relationships in the orchestral counterpart. The resulting piece is a conjuring of various energies, or furies, caught in the background noise of Paris, and finding their way into the back of my throat to be sung into a quiet fury.

    Lissa Meridan

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Thomas Goss  

A Village Wedding

Duration: 14' 05" Year: 2003
a suite for string orchestra with continuo and solo obbligato in the second movement

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  • Programme Note

    A Village Wedding combines two different conceptual approaches; that of the program piece wherein images or activity is described by music; and that of the concerto grosso, a Baroque form which both collectively and individually showcases the players of an ensemble. In the latter case, the piece would seem to fulfill many if not all of the 18th-century requirements. After an overture, movements based on dance rhythms ensue, including the Pavane, March, Gigue, and Rigadoon. Yet the material is cast in a mold that is necessarily programmatic. The Overture, with its opening solemnity, birdsong trills, and developing energy, is intended to describe the bright Sunday morning of a country village, along with the excitement and bustle of wedding preparations. The _Meditation_’s searching cadenza and pensive sweetness exhorts the attendants to send out their blessings to the bride and groom, while the Processional calls the wedding party to the altar. The Dance at the end paints a fiddler’s paradise of flying knees and elbows to jigs and reels as the whole village joins in the revelry.

    The piece is dedicated to the composer’s fiancée Erica, and acknowledges with gratitude and appreciation the dedication and excellence of the members of the YPCO.

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Christopher Blake  

Angel at Ahipara

Duration: 11' 00" Year: 1999
for string orchestra

  • Programme Note

    In the isolated settlement of Ahipara in the far north of the North Island of New Zealand a tiny white church sits on a hillock looking out to a range of low brooding hills. In the cemetery below, an angel stands on a pedestal at the head of a grave. One day in 1992 renowned New Zealand photographer Robin Morrison came to the church and captured the essence of the angel’s vigil in a memorable and famous image.

    In late 1997 the composer Chris Blake travelled to Ahipara and stook in the same place and experiences the same image. The outcome was a short work for string orchestra which captures the hope and desolation of the angel and the memory of the soul over which she stands guard. The work was created for conductor Andrew Sewell and is based, at his suggestion, on a passage from an earlier work We All Fall Down for obliggato cello and orchestra.

    This work is one of a series of four, making up The Northland Panels. They were written and premiered as separate works.

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John Ritchie  

Aquarius: Suite No. 2 for String Orchestra

Duration: 13' 00" Year: 1982

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Anthony Ritchie  

as long as time

Duration: 10' 00" Year: 1991
for unaccompanied SSAATBB

  • Programme Note

    This work was commissioned by The Southern Consort of Voices in 1991, with funding from Creative NZ. It sets three NZ poems to music, with a fourth song being wordless: Timepiece to a poem by Cilla McQueen; Before the Fall to a poem by Rachel McAlpine; I lie, I watch the ceiling (wordless); and We could just disappear to a poem by Sam Hunt.

    In 2001 Auckland choir Viva Voce recorded this work on their CD entitled Snapshots – A Cappella Choral Favourites. Conductor John Rosser writes of the work – “Anthony has a wonderful knack of writing for voice. Timepiece portrays a woman struggling to break free of suburban neurosis and the tyranny of time. Before the Fall alludes to lost childhood innocence, and We Could just Disappear depicts the future as an endless tunnel of the mind.”

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John Rimmer  

At the Appointed Time

Duration: 12' 00" Year: 1973
for orchestra

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John Rimmer  

Au

Duration: 13' 00" Year: 2002
concerto for bass clarinet and ensemble

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  • Instrumentation
    Flute doubling alto flute; clarinet doubling bass clarinet; horn; bass trombone; percussion (3 tom toms, 2 bongos, 2 suspended cymbals, crotales, vibraphone, bell tree); cello; double bass and bass clarinet solo
  • Programme Note

    Au began as a series of musical reflections on the Auroroa with pitch material based on the name of bass clarinettist Andrew Uren whose initials provide the title. This title, ‘Au’ is also the abbreviation for ‘aurum’, the Latin word for gold. As I was composing I realised that I was dealing with golden qualities not only of the sounds in the piece but also of the musicians in the ensemble 175 East who would be giving its first performance. This was particularly the case with the soloist Andrew Uren whose adventurous bass clarinet playing has revolutionised the way in which composers in New Zealand think about the instrument.

    The work was commissioned by Andrew Uren with funding provided by Creative New Zealand and was first performed on 15 September 2002 at The Space, Wellington, by Andrew Uren and ‘175 East’ conducted by Hamish McKeich.

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David Farquhar  

Auras

Duration: 14' 00" Year: 1994
for solo piano with orchestra

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  • Instrumentation
    1111;4230; timp, perc, strings
  • Programme Note

    Imagine the harmonics associated with each musical sound as its “aura”. This piece brings these auras into fuller consciousness: at the start the orchestra’s staccato chord is immediately decorated by the solo piano’s flourish on its harmonic series. These auras permeate the work. The piece is in a single movement – its various sections related rhythmically. It was first performed by Barbara King and the Victoria University Orchestra under Peter Walls in August 1995.

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John Ritchie  

Canary Wine

Duration: 10' 00" Year: 1974
cycle for SSAA women's chorus

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