On each new day – and before anywhere else on Earth – the sun’s rays first strike Mt Hikurangi, on the East Cape of the North Island of New Zealand. This album begins with Christopher Marshall’s evocative and programmatic ‘Hikurangi Sunrise’, tracing the first light and bird calls and builds wth intensity as the new day wakes. Douglas Lilburn’s ‘A Song of Islands’ is a classic in the New Zealand repertoire – a piece expressive of our geography at the southern end of the world and surrounded by ocean. ‘Wild Music’ was made in collaboration with New Zealand’s Department of Conservation. Other works on this album are Tchaikovsky’s ‘Puss in Boots’, Dvorak’s ‘The Wood Dove’, Elgar’s ‘Elegy for Strings’, MacCunn’s ‘The Land of the Mountain and the Flood’, Saint-Saens’ ‘Aquarium’, and de Falla’s ‘Ritual Fire Dance’, all of which are interpreted as expressions of New Zealand’s own landscape or environmental issues.
Add to wishlist