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Gillian Whitehead  

Alice

Duration: 36' 00" Year: 2002
an eight movement monodrama for mezzo-soprano and orchestra

Score Sample
Score Sample
  • Instrumentation
    3343, 3310, harp, timp., 3 perc., strings, mezzo-soprano
  • Programme Note

    In 1909 Alice Adcock, a lively and adventurous young woman from Manchester, was on her way to New Zealand. She was 23, and had recently developed TB, for which there was then no cure. Somehow she persuaded her widowed father to let her travel alone to the other side of the world in case a healthy climate would save her life. (It worked – she lived for another 50 years). The family kept her entertaining letter describing shipboard life, and a few postcards from her have also survived, but most of what we know about her time in New Zealand comes from her father’s letters to her, of which he kept copies, or from family tradition. On her arrival in New Zealand, Alice went into service, travelling widely, much to the consternation of her father. As housekeeper (and the only woman) on a farm in Makarora (a remote settlement on Lake Wanaka) she became pregnant to an unknown man, but was ‘rescued’ by marriage to a local farmer, Charles Pipson, shortly before the birth of her daughter. In 1911, her beloved father died; in 1912, Alice and Charles had a son and the following year, pregnant again, Alice took her children back to England to visit her family. Tragically, while she was away, her husband died suddenly of typhoid fever. Alice hurried back to Makarora to claim her inheritance, but left the two babies with her brother Sam and his wife (who were shortly to emigrate to New Zealand) and took only her eldest child, the illegitimate one, with her. This outraged her sisters-in-law, who saw it as an insult to their dead brother; they sent her away from the farm empty-handed. Once again she had to take a housekeeping job, this time in the North Island. In 1914, Alice and her brother’s family met up again, and Alice began a new life. (Fleur Adcock – abridged) The music of Alice is text-driven, ranging between a language at times extremely simple, as was the basic musical language of the settlers, and at times quite complex, evoking a storm at sea, or the unease of the settlers in a new environment, or Alice’s reaction to the problems which beset her. The piece is held together by various referential motifs. The initial idea, which perhaps suggests the instability of the sea, is also present in the bell-like sounds marking Charles’ death, music associated with a storm at sea is later associated with mental stress, while music suggestive of the movement of shipboard lice later underlies Alice’s traumatic encounter with her sisters-in-law.

    There are eight sections, which often merge into one another: 1. in a letter to her father, Alice describes shipboard life; 2. in New Zealand, she compares her past life and hopes for the future; 3. a dialogue between father and daughter, expressed through their letters; 4. in Makarora, Alice discovers she is pregnant; 5. Alice hears of her father’s death; 6. in England, she learns of her husband’s death; 7. back in Makarora, Alice is turned away by her sisters-in-law; 8. turning her back on the South Island, Alice looks forward to her new life with her brother’s family in the north.

    While writing this piece, I was drawn again and again into the thought that, although this is a true story, set in a particular place at a certain time, it has the resonances of a universal myth, known to all of us who live here. Our forebears, or we ourselves, have crossed the seas to begin a new life, with unforeseen and unimaginable difficulties and felicities, whether ten years, a century or a millennium or so ago.

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Lyell Cresswell  

Canterbury Rhymes

Duration: 35' 00" Year: 2006
for mezzo soprano and orchestra

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Gao Ping  

Concerto for Piano and Orchestra

Duration: 30' 00" Year: 2007
for piano and orchestra

Audio Sample
  • Instrumentation
    piano and double wind orchestra, with slightly extended percussion section
  • Programme Note

    Concerto for Piano and Orchestra is untitled but the music is hardly “absolute”. On the contrary, it is often extroverted, evocative, and full of passionate expression. The piece is both a concerto, in terms of the amount of writing for the piano (including three extended cadenzas), and also a symphony since it has an equally demanding role for the orchestra. The relationship between the two forces alternates between independence and embracement.


    The first movement, in moderate tempo, is lyrical in nature and evolves around singing lines. The melodic style shares similarities with the music of some of the nationalities of Southern China, for example, of the Miao people.


    The second movement has a long slow introduction which unfolds from a series of mysterious chords. They form the basis for the rest of the movement that becomes fast and virtuosic, combining dancing rhythms and long melodic lines. The whole work evokes an atmosphere of songs and dances of ancient times.

    Concerto for Piano and Orchestra was commissioned by Professor Jack Richards who is an ardent supporter of New Zealand music. I played the 1st performance with New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Keneth Young in the Wellington Town Hall in May 2008.

    Gao Ping, August 2008

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Matthew Davidson  

Music for Piano with Orchestra

Duration: 30' 00" Year: 2008
for piano and orchestra

  • Instrumentation
    3[1.2.picc]3[1.2.ca]22, 2110, 2 perc., harp, solo piano, strings
  • Programme Note

    This work is not really a conventional concerto, nor is it a symphony, but rather, a hybrid of the two. The first movement is inspired by Egyptian Oud music, and is a series of variations on a nine-note mode of my own invention. Each subsequent variation before and after the “Taqsim” has a number of measures divisible by nine. This is also true for some groups of time-signatures. While this may seem arbitrary, in fact it is (we composers often are an arbitrary lot). The second movement is a pastiche of how Bruckner might have written a slow movement to a concerto if he had ever written one (however, melodies of Basque and Czech baroque origin are employed). Movement three is titled after an aphorism in Twee (a West African language) and means, metaphorically, “I’m no better than you are.” While using Ligeti’s concept of placing two diatonic melodies a minor ninth apart, it also moves into different bi-tonal key signatures, thereby providing some harmonic movement (although not movement in the conventional western sense). It also emulates some African dance music where often one finds regular beats of unequal length. The final movement uses two Renaissance melodies as its foundation, “A la Guerra, a la Guerra” and the title melody. In addition, there is a melody for the second group (we are dealing with sonata form, here) which has its origins in the folk music of the langue d’Oc region of France.

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Ross Harris  

Symphony III

Duration: 40' 00" (can vary) Year: 2008
for full orchestra including accordion

Score Sample
  • Programme Note

    The initial musical thoughts for Symphony III came from two related sources of inspiration – the paintings of Marc Chagall and Klezmer music. I had been playing accordion in a klezmer band in Wellington for a year or so before starting the work. I was intrigued by the genre and began writing klezmer influenced tunes for the band to play.

    The simple klezmer tunes are woven into the piece in different ways. Some of them are treated as symphonic themes that are developed and transformed while others are quoted as melodies from popular music. There are passing references to dances, marches, and the use of solo violin and the novel appearance of accordion make reference to folk-like musical ideas inspired by klezmer.

    Symphony No. 3 is in one movement divided into five sections generally alternating between slow and fast music. Sometimes the music is very transparent and simple at other times dense web-like textures emerge.

    Symphony III can be heard as a unfolding journey, following paths whose destination is uncertain or unknown. It might almost be thought of as a saga, a story which is sometimes mysterious, sometimes funny, sometimes tragic but, I hope, always stimulating to the listener’s imagination.

    Ross Harris

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Ross Harris  

Symphony No. 2

Duration: 31' 00" Year: 2006
for mezzo-soprano and orchestra

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Anthony Ritchie  

Symphony No. 2 - The Widening Gyre

Duration: 31' 00" Year: 2000
for orchestra

Score Sample
Audio Sample
  • Instrumentation
    2(2nd doubled piccolo)232; 4231; timp (4-including piccolo timp), 2 perc (bass drum, 4 tom toms, suspended cymbal, large suspended cymbal, crash cymbals, tam tam, xylophone, marimba,glockenspiel, log drum,hammer(hitting a metallic object), poi (suspended between two strings) hp, pf,electronic keyboard,strs
  • Programme Note

    “Turning and turning in the widening gyre
    The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
    Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
    Mere anarchy is loosed on the world . . .”

    from The Second Coming by W. B. Yeats

    When asked to compose a work on the meaning and symbolism of the new millennium, I decided to use William Butler Yeats’ famous poem The Second Coming as a starting point. Written in 1921, when the old order in Europe was breaking down, it suggests a revolution or rotation in history (the gyre) will bring about a ‘second coming’ of an important historical figure, and the dawn of a new millennium. Yeats’ vision of the new world order to come is not, however, optimistic. He sees the coming of a ‘rough beast’ with a ‘lion body and the head of a man’, a cold and heartless creature that might be equated with certain infamous and autocratic leaders in the 20th century.

    The ‘gyre’ or revolution is represented in the symphony by a rolling, sliding timpani sound, accompanied by bass drum and tam tam at the start of the work. This idea becomes an important motif and appears at the very start. Following the ‘gyre’, we hear a ‘life and death’ theme that begins like a cradle song (the birth of Christ), rises, and then twists downwards in a chromatic line. This theme provides most of the material for what follows. The slow introduction climaxes with hammer blows, a reference to the death of Christ. From this a trumpet call emerges, becoming a significant motif later in the movement. In the allegro that follows, the ‘life and death’ theme is transformed into a fast and restless melody, beginning as pizzicato on the strings. Complimenting this is a macabre and folky theme on muted trumpet and clarinets, evoking a sort of frenzied, gyrating dance. The music quietens and a lyrical theme appears on flute, accompanied by timpani and harp and developed by the strings. As the music climaxes again, the trumpet call reappears, shared around other brass instruments. The significance of this trumpet call can be seen with reference to another poem, this time by New Zealander Peggy Dunstan:

    Stratagem of Trumpets

    “Then the trumpets sounded
    Not in a flare of pomp and pageantry
    But with a golden lilting laughter

    That seemed to open up the sky
    So that the music dropped like rain
    Upon the upturned faces
    And the enchanted ears were closed
    To everything except those throbbing notes. . . "

    The trumpets distract the listeners, and make them unaware of the advancing enemy. Dunstan’s poem goes on to describe a massacre of Serbs in 1389 at the time of the battle of Kosovo between Serbs and Turks. At the time of composing my symphony Kosovo was once again in the grip of war and atrocity, only this time the Serbs were the aggressors and Albanians were the victims.

    It seems to me that Kosovo sums up a situation common in our past millennium: an endless cycle of struggle for land and power, costing many innocent lives. In the music, the log drum heralds a sort of ‘musical battle-field’ in which the ‘life and death’ theme becomes an aggressive, jagged idea, used fugally in an increasingly dissonant texture. Following the ‘battle’, solo strings, piccolo and harp provide a brief lament for the dead and the music returns to the music of the Introduction. This time it is mixed fragments of the flute theme, and the movement ends quietly with the ‘gyre’ motif.

    If the first movement represents the past, then the second movement is a comment on the present. The title Mi-1st refers to the heavy emphasis on the note E (or Mi in the sol-fa system) as a central pitch, but can also be interpreted as ‘me-first’. Essentially this music is about the natural human tendency to be self-centred, which I believe has become much more prevalent in our own society. It is perhaps one aspect of Yeats’ ‘rough beast’ that hinders our progress. There are three main ideas in this presto movement. The first is a savage chromatic theme that encircles the note E, played initially on strings. It is immediately followed by a vigorous, syncopated theme on strings and winds. As a contrast, the harp accompanies a quieter, smoother theme on the violins, which also includes the twisting, chromatic motif from the first movement. In the middle, the music becomes increasingly chaotic until a climax on C is reached, with hope for resolution to the discords. However, the music slips into the key of B, and the strings play a restless, anxious version of the contrast theme. The frenetic energy of the first part gradually dissipats, and the movement collapses into a web of solo violins. The ‘gyre’ motif has the final say.

    There are a number of themes in the third movement, but all evolve in some way or other from the constantly twisting, turning melodic line that appears at the start. Used in close canon, this melody represents the intertwining DNA molecule, and hence the title of the movement, Double Helix. Discovered recently in our history, genetics are sure to have a highly significant role in the future. This music looks forward with the hope that genetics will be used in a positive way. It also acknowledges that we carry with us the characteristics of previous generations (covering a whole millennium and more!), and that the future will be significantly shaped by these characteristics. At the same time we need to learn from the hard lessons of previous generations in order to make progress.

    Consequently, the symphony has an optimistic and celebratory end, which is tempered by a sense of warning. In the coda, the threads of Double Helix motifs are combined with a return of the main theme from the first movement, played on full brass.

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Michael Norris  

Symphony No.1: the mountains ponder a silence as profound as stars

Duration: 34' 00" Year: 2002
for orchestra

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Anthony Ritchie  

Timeless Land

Duration: 43' 00" Year: 2003
a work for orchestra accompanied by film, artworks and poetry

  • Instrumentation
    3222; 4231; timp, percussions (2), harp, strings, solo soprano
  • Programme Note

    Central Otago holds a special place in the hearts of many people. This is clear to see in the wonderful book called ‘Timeless Land’ which combines the paintings of Grahame Sydney with the writings of Brian Turner and Owen Marshall. We decided early on to focus on the Maniototo, which is Grahame’s spiritual heartland and which has inspired so many of his great works. For me the Maniototo suggests a variety of feelings: awe at the expansiveness of the land and the surrounding ranges. There is the exhilarating beauty of the different seasons: the Autumnal colours for instance, or the bleak Winter images. There is the strange sense of freedom and escape that one experiences driving through the Maniototo. There can also be an overwhelming sense of loneliness, and feelings of insignificance when placed in such a vast, un-peopled landscape. Then there are the reminders of human impermanence, with decaying and abandoned structures, old graveyards and memorials. The Maniototo will mean different things to different people, but in this work I have tried to portray it in sound, as I feel it in my heart. So the music is not simply descriptive, or impressionistic; it also reflects human moods and emotions. While the music is designed to be combined with images, it can also stand alone. There is a loose symphonic structure in the four movements, with recurring themes and motifs. Most significant of these are the opening cornet melody, and an assertive cornet call that first appears in the middle of the second movement. This cornet call has a vague connection with The Last Post, and becomes a reminder of death in the third movement. Most themes and ideas in the music derive from the manipulations of a 5-note motif, using magic squares. The 5-note motif, which is never openly revealed in the piece, comes from a short Magnificat, composed at the time of my mother’s death in 2001.

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