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Eric Biddington  

Flute Concerto No. 2

Duration: 12' 00" Year: 1990
for flute and chamber orchestra

Eve de Castro-Robinson  

Kihikihi

Duration: 10' 00" Year: 1998
for orchestra of flexible instrumentation and tape

  • Instrumentation
    fls(recs),obs(rec),cls (saxs), bsns (b.cls); tpts (saxes/hns) tbns (hns/tubas), piano, 2 perc, strings, tape (most players need extra percussion)
  • Programme Note

    Kihikihi was written for an amateur orchestra with players of widely different abilities, therefore it is suitable for anything from a secondary school to a professional symphony orchestra. The conductor must have a suitably theatrical approach.

  • Availability

Chris Adams  

Mahuika

Duration: 11' 00" Year: 2012
a work for organ and orchestra

  • Instrumentation
    3*3*3*3*; 4331; Timp; 2 Perc.; Organ; Strings
  • Programme Note

    Mahuika for organ and orchestra was, like several of my pieces, given a title in its infancy. In the way that a child grows into her name over time, Mahuika has developed a particular character during the process of writing. The work is not programmatic, but the origins of its name have come to influence the work: Mahuika, a Maori fire goddess, is awakened into her full terrifying extreme, utilising the full range and capacity of both the Auckland Town Hall organ and the Auckland Philharmonia. Mahuika evokes the sense of a young teenage goddess full of ideas and vitality but without the opportunity to yet develop and explore them fully.

    The work has the potential to mature into a full-scale organ symphony of around 30-40 minutes: if anyone is in a position to fund her to grow further please contact me to discuss.

  • Availability

Anthony Ritchie  

Moods

Duration: 14' 00" Year: 1990
four pieces for amateur orchestra

  • Instrumentation
    Instrumentation is very flexible: desc recorders, fls, obs, cls, bns, hns, trps, trms, alto and tenor saxs, 3timp,perc: (4 players) 2xylo,2glock,bs-dr,wd-bl,cym; strs (vln 1,2,3)
  • Programme Note

    Four easy pieces for amateur or school orchestra describing the following moods: ‘Ecstatic’, ‘Sad’, ‘Angry’ and ‘Happy’. The music is designed for school-age performers and features simple and strong rhythms. The work was commissioned by The Christchurch School of Instrumental Music, for use as a massed item at their annual combined concert.

  • Availability

Jack Body  

My Name is Mok Bhon

Duration: 13' 00" Year: 2009
for orchestra

  • Instrumentation
    includes video images
  • Programme Note

    I have been haunted by the Cambodian genocide ever since reading Dit Phran’s account of his experiences during the Khmer Rouge years, vividly portrayed in the 1984 movie The Killing Fields. More recently I’ve read biographies of Pol Pot by Philip Short and David Chandler. In 1995, at MOMA in New York, I chanced upon a devastating photographic exhibition of selected portraits from the comprehensive collection of the infamous Tuol Sleng prison, also known as S-21, where an estimated 14,000 men, women and children passed through its gates to be photographed, interrogated, tortured and finally executed as perceived enemies of Pol Pot’s violent, paranoid regime.

    In 2007 I was able to visit Cambodia for the first time. I made daily visits to Tuol Sleng to sit among the portraits and to sense the presence of the victims of the brutal genocide. Mok Bhon is but one of these victims. His face is difficult to read, but his eyes burn into me.

    What is the lesson of this dreadful history that unleashed an evil that destroyed one in five of the whole Cambodian population? How can such evil exist in a modern world?

    Explanations for phenomena like S-21 are embedded in our capacities to order and obey each other, to bond with each other against strangers, to lose ourselves inside groups, to yearn for perfection and approval, and to vent our anger and confusion, especially when we are encouraged to do so by people we respect, onto other, often helpless people. To find the source of the evil that was enacted at S-21 on a daily basis, we need look no further than ourselves.
    David Chandler, Voices from S-21

    My Name is Mok Bhon uses transcriptions I made of two genres of traditional Cambodian music: a funeral song played by a trai leak ensemble (singer, gongs, drum, gong-chime circle, and double reed sralai), and a plaintive 3-note melody played on the sneng, an instrument consisting of an animal horn with a reed inserted in its side. The performance of this work is accompanied by images I shot at Tuol Sleng, assembled as a video with the expert help of Andrew Brettell.

    I am grateful to the following: Sokun for recording his voice for me, Sokha Mey for translation, and Anton Isselhadt for inviting me to Cambodia in the first place. The work was commissioned for NZSO by my good friend Jack Richards, who wishes to make a dedication to the memory of his friend Kong Orn, another victim of the Khmer Rouge purges.

    Jack Body

  • Availability

Chris Watson  

ogee

Duration: 11' 00" Year: 2009
for solo violin and orchestra

David Hamilton  

Piano Concerto

Duration: 11' 00" Year: 2005
for solo piano and orchestra

  • Instrumentation
    2222;2220;timp;4 perc;solo pno;strings percussion: glock,xyl,tiangle,tamb,bongos,susp. cym.
  • Programme Note

    This short concerto was written for the Taharoto Orchestra, a group consisting of students from Westlake Girls and Westlake Boys High Schools conducted by Liz Cable. It was the second work I had written for the group. The concerto is cast in the traditional three movement form: fast-slow-fast. Although there is no cadenza as such, the first movement does contain a short solo section where a cadenza might have appeared. The first movement is rather like an extended fanfare, making much use of the chords of F major and G major. Sometimes these two chords sound simultaneously, sometimes they are heard successively. The music opens featuring the percussion and low strings playing ‘pizzicato’, setting in motion the underlying rhythmic energy that pervades the whole movement. The second movement is a short, slow and serious movement., It uses a single theme which is divided into two sections, the first section in A minor, and the second section beginning in C major. This theme is heard three times, the final time allowing the piano to present a varied treatment of the opening section, while the second part of the theme is presented as a canon. The final movement, marked ‘playfully’, uses a mix of 4 beats and 5 beats in a bar. The music appears to have a slightly ‘French neo-classical’ feel to it, using short phrases and simple succinct melodic ideas. The whole work ends with an affirmative cadence in C major.

  • Availability

Jack Body  

Poems of Solitary Delights

Duration: 13' 00" Year: 1985
for orchestra and tenor (narrator)

Robbie Ellis  

Relish in Immature Bombast

Duration: 12' 00" Year: 2012
for organ, drum kit & orchestra

  • Instrumentation
    3[1.2.p]33[1.2.Eb]3[1.2.contra]; 4331; timp.; 2 perc.; organ; drum kit; strings (conductor needs a referee's whistle)
  • Programme Note

    In others’ words:

    “ONE TWO!” – Jono Sawyer, drum kit soloist.

    “There’s a specific face that I make when trying not to lose my dignity and I am making that face now.” – Cordelia Black

    “That was weird. Batman and Joker’s love child?” – Rueben Waine

    What were you thinking [of the title]?! It’s just too silly for words.” – Eva Radich

    “This thing is outrageous. Good on you!” – Adrian Hollay, recording engineer for Workshop 3

    “I read that as ‘piece for organ, drunk and orchestra’.” – Justine Pierre


    The composer blogs about this work here: http://www.robbie.co.nz/2012/03/03/orchan-orgestra/

  • Availability

Kit Powell  

Te Ika a Maui

Duration: 10' 00" Year: 2007
a concerto for clarinet and orchestra

  • Instrumentation
    for solo clarinet, 3323; 4331; timp.; perc.; strings
  • Programme Note

    This is pure program music. I wanted to write a sort of New Zealand “Till Eulenspiegel” and chose the legend of how Maui fishes up Aotearoa. All the main events of the story are depicted: how Maui hides in his brothers’ canoe with his magic hook, how he helps his brothers to a fabulous catch, how he lets down his own special hook and catches something unbelievably big which leads to a herculean struggle, how the brothers cut up Maui’s “fish” while he is going to get help, and then the final realisation that the gods are not pleased with the behaviour of the brothers.

    The figure of Maui is played by the clarinet, a part which is so important that the work became a Concerto for Clarinet and Orchestra.

    This is the first part of a projected four movement Maui Cycle which will include Maui slowing the sun, Maui getting fire and the death of Maui.

    Kit Powell

  • Availability