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Alex Taylor  

[inner]

Duration: 06' 00"
mini viola concerto

David Hamilton  

Concerto Grosso No.2

Duration: 09' 00" Year: 2004
for two violins, cello and string orchestra

  • Programme Note

    The title of this work may seem unexpected as there is no ‘Concert Grosso No. 1’ in my list of works! However I’ve always considered my 1985 work for strings and percussion ‘Well Done, Mister Bach’ to be a concerto grosso. That work features the leaders of all five string parts as a ‘concertante’ group. In a more traditional Baroque manner, this work features just the leaders of the first and second violin and cello sections as the soloists. My intention with the work was to write something in the manner of a Baroque concerto grosso, drawing inspiration from typical styles of the period. Mixed in are my own musical and compositional preferences, so that in the end the piece might be described as ‘Baroque meets minimalism’. I finally gave into the temptation to give the three movements titles. The title, ‘Prelude’, of the first movement is a little ironic as it is longer than the remaining two movements combined. The second movement, ‘Air on a Shoestring’ suggests a rather brief, perhaps truncated air, in this case, a piece which fails to return to its home key. The final movement is in the manner of a Baroque fugue, I knew that university paper would finally come in useful one day!. ‘Concert Grosso No. 2’ was commissioned by the Music Department of St Cuthbert’s College in Auckland, and follows a commission from them the previous year for ‘Whisper to me’ (for choir, strings and percussion).

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Christopher Marshall  

Dare to Hope

Duration: 06' 00" Year: 2008
for wind band

  • Instrumentation
    either one player per part (wind ensemble) or multiple players (symphonic band)
    1 piccolo, 3 flutes, 1 oboe, 1 clarinet in E flat, 1 clarinet in B flat, 1 bass clarinet; 2 alto saxophones, 1 tenor saxophone, 1 baritone saxophone, 2 bassoons; 4 horns in F, 3 trumpets in B flat, 2 tenor trombones, 1 bass trombone, 1 euphonium, 1 tuba; 1 string bass (to low C); timpany, percussion
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Philip Norman  

Earthquake: 22.2.11

Duration: 06' 00" Year: 2011
a single movement work for narrator and orchestra

  • Instrumentation
    flexible instrumentation up to 3333; 4331; 3perc, timp, piano, harp; strings
  • Programme Note

    Earthquake: 22.2.11 began as a project after the September 2010 earthquakes struck Christchurch and surrounding districts. I was interested in capturing the peculiar sonic properties of the earthquakes – the unnatural preparatory calm, the low pitched boom, the change in air pressure, the accelerating rhythms, the creaks, the rattles, the cracks, the climactic shuddering of the building one was in, the decay of sound, and the silence before the cacophonous response of voices, alarms, telephones, sirens, police cars, ambulances, fire trucks and helicopters.

    I successfully applied for Creative New Zealand funding to compose such a work for the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra and set to work late in 2010.

    The earthquakes hadn’t finished though. On February 22, 2011, in New Zealand’s worst natural disaster since the 1931 Napier earthquake, a 7.2 earthquake centred on Christchurch killed 185 people and caused inestimable damage to the city’s buildings and infrastructure. Composing a dispassionate response was no longer appropriate; indeed, composing anything at all about the event seemed wrong, almost exploitative, in the face of the human tragedy.

    I stumbled upon Gary McCormick’s poem Earthquake 22.2.11 shortly after he wrote it as a white-hot response to the devastation. I empathised with his anger and his railing at the randomness of the event. Even so, it took almost a year before I felt ready to set Gary’s poem to music. The catalyst was a further round of earthquakes beginning on 23 December 2011, in which further damage, including the destruction of our previous home, a beautiful Victorian dwelling I had helped restore in the 1990s, occurred to the city. Something like 10 quakes of magnitude 5 or more occurred while I was composing the score.

  • Availability

Chris Gendall  

Gravitas

Duration: 08' 00" Year: 2011
for full orchestra

  • Programme Note

    This work’s gravitas (characterising quality or attribute) refers to the phenomenon in music where the most prominent or audible elements at any moment in a piece differ from those most important to its construction. (The latter often behave as poles to which the former gravitate.)

    Gravitas was composed during the 2010-11 Jack C. Richards/Creative NZ/New Zealand School of Music Composer Residency at the request of Hamish McKeich and the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra.

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Mike Nock  

Hadrian's Wall

Duration: 05' 38"
for jazz orchestra

Chris Watson  

Jangeran

Duration: 09' 30" Year: 2005
for orchestra and gamelan

  • Instrumentation
    2222; 4331; gamelan; perc; strings gamelan: suling, kendang, ceng ceng, gongs, 2 gangsa, 2 calung
  • Programme Note

    Jangeran seeks to bridge the musical gap between East and West: a Balinese melody is appropriated by the Western orchestra and is recast in a range of Western contexts. At various points a gamelan ensemble, embedded in the Western orchestra, emerges and reasserts ownership of the musical source materials while at other times the two bodies combine to explore new and strange syntheses of culture, movement and soundworlds.

    Jangeran was commissioned and premiered by the Nusantara Symphony Orchestra in Jakarta in May 2005, conductor Edward Van Ness, with further performances in Osaka and Tokyo, Yogyakarta and Jakarta.

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Philip Dadson  

MAYA

Duration: 06' 00" Year: 1999
a counter-millennial fanfare for orchestra

Lachlan McKenzie  

Observation

Duration: 07' 00" Year: 2001
for full orchestra with set of African drums

Margaret Wegener  

Soundscape

Duration: 08' 00" Year: 1972, r. 1999
for symphony orchestra

  • Programme Note

    Soundscape for symphony orchestra was conceived in 1972 when the composer was a teacher at Barton Court School in Canterbury. As house mistress of a house named after one of the planets, which happend to be Pluto, she sketched a last movement for Holst’s Planet Suite, which was intended to be called Planet Nova, subtitled Homage to Holst. The project, for the Kent County Youth Orchestra, unfortunately fell through, and the sketches remained untouched until the late 1990s, when they were re-worked into the present pieces, scored as the composer puts it, for a Planet-sized orchestra.

    The first performance was given at a concert at the Marches School, Oswestry on 8 April 2000 by the Oswestry Sinfonia conducted by Ian Ward to mark the composer’s 80th birthday.

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