Anthony Ritchie unveils his new symphony at the Otago Arts
Festival. Photo by Peter McIntosh.
Like many artists, composer Anthony Ritchie is driven by
a great need to create.
"It's hard to put any other way. I start to get frustrated if
I don't have some creative outlets," he said.
"I can go for quite a period of time without composing but I
find I'm composing most of the time, even when I'm busy with
teaching.
"I think it's a real need to get something out."
One of the most prolific New Zealand composers, Dr Ritchie
says he finds it more exciting to create something new rather
than reinterpret, as performing artists do.
"Plus I want to express ideas I can share with people. That's
important to me - to feel I can say something that other
people may find interesting or thought-provoking."
He says in recent years he has developed a political
awareness, writing pieces such as Whale Song to
protest against whaling.
"It probably wouldn't make a blind bit of difference but it's
something I feel I want to do."
Ritchie's Symphony No 3 will be given its world
premiere by the Southern Sinfonia on October 9, the opening
weekend of the Otago Festival of the Arts, a few weeks after
his 50th birthday.
Writing an orchestral symphony is the ultimate challenge for
a composer, he says.
It's a complex task to produce some 30 lines of music for
more than 50 instruments, but he prefers to think of it like
using different colours on an artist's palette.
"It takes a long time to be able to think in terms of all
those colours, all those instruments."
Ritchie develops his ideas at the piano, then translates them
into the sounds of the orchestral instruments.
With experience, he is able to keep those sounds in his head
while working on others.
He also likes to keep particular players in mind and write
solos for them if he knows the orchestra that will perform
it, he says.
The Southern Sinfonia has performed his previous two
symphonies. No 2 The widening gyre, inspired by W. B.
Yeats' poem "The Second Coming", was written to celebrate the
millennium.
His first, Boum, premiered in 1994, was inspired by E.
M. Forster's novel A Passage to India.
A name, residential address, and (preferably residential) telephone number is required from readers who comment on ODT Online. These details will not be visible to site visitors.