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Alexander Cowdell  

A Place of Quiet

Duration: 15' 00" Year: 1987
for solo tenor and chamber orchestra

  • Instrumentation
    flute/picc., 2 clar. (2nd dbls bass cl.); tpt; strings
  • Programme Note

    This composition is a setting of a poem by the Australian philosopher, poet and musician Melvyn Cann. The first part describes a spiritual journey through suffering to transcendence and peace. The second part describes a state of consciousness where both thought and time cease, and only feeling remains.

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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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Douglas Lilburn  

A Song of Islands

Duration: 16' 00" Year: 1946
for orchestra

David Farquhar  

Anniversary Suite No. 1

Duration: 15' 00" Year: 1961
for orchestra

David Farquhar  

Anniversary Suite No. 2

Duration: 16' 00" Year: 1965
for orchestra

Leonie Holmes  

Aquae Sulis

Duration: 15' 00" Year: 2012
for orchestra of winds, strings, harp and percussion

Rachael Morgan  

Armannai

Duration: 15' 00" Year: 2003
for string orchestra

Ross Harris  

As though there were no God

Duration: 18' 00" Year: 2003
for orchestra

Christopher Blake  

Christ at Whangape

Duration: 18' 00" Year: 2007
for string orchestra

  • Programme Note

    A heartrending, exquisite sculpture of Christ on the Cross stands on a headstone in the graveyard of St. Gabriel’s Church at Pawarenga in Northland, New Zealand. Its intimations of eternity are caught in the Robbin Morrison photograph Christ at Whangape Harbour which appears in his 1994 photographic essay A Journey. It is an image of Christ in the wilderness. He is held in a primeval landscape of bare, low, dark hills, silhouetted against a grey sky and luminous sea and mudflats in the harbour.

    How did Christ come to be in this place? The music presents the revelation of His spirit that starts with the French Pikopo or Bishop sailing into the great harbour Te Hokianga-nui-a-Kupe. It is an event of immense significance. The bearers of God and his Son literally follow the path of Kupe, the traditional discoverer of New Zealand, and arrive in a schooner named after his homeland.

    The Word of God is spread by His servants. The Mill Hill Missioners build churches and make converts. The Spirit of God suffuses the harbours, valleys and hills of the north. The souls of the priests and worshipers of past generations permeate the churchyard. A silver of early morning sunlight suddenly lights up, in perfect relief, the epitaph beneath Christ on the Cross. It is a miracle, a hidden text revealed by the hand of Christ above.

    This is the final piece of Northland Panels, a series of four works for string orchestra based on photographs from A Journey. The others in the series are Angel at Ahipara, Night Journey to Pawarenga and Anthem of the Kaipara.

    Christopher Blake
    December 2007

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Anthony Ritchie  

Coming to It

Duration: 19' 00" Year: 1999
for orchestra and speaker - music with poems by Sam Hunt

  • Instrumentation
    2*2*2* (doubling alto sax. in E flat) 2; 2200; 2 perc.; guitar (amplified); strings. Percussion: tam tam, bass drum, large suspended cymbal, wind chimes,glockenspiel, xylophone, bongos, 2 woodblocks (large and small), drum kit (including suspended cymbal, bass drum, small tom tom
  • Programme Note

    Coming to It was commissioned by the Wellington Sinfonia (now Vector Wellington Orchestra) to collaborate with Sam Hunt. The poems and music speak from the heart about the everyday issues and concerns of ordinary people. There are poems about mothers, fathers, lovers, children and dogs. The poems touch on life and death, and the title incidents between that on the surface seem insignificant but have meaning for those involved. The scene is set in the opening poem, Coming to It. Some of the music is bluesy in character, as in the Plateau Songs, and some is folksy in style, as in A White Gentian, where the guitar and flute play a duet. Occasionally the music specifically describes the text, as in the hammering, migraine-like You House the Moon.

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