Marama Hall's Wednesday lunchtime concert yesterday was a celebration of Otago University alumni John Ritchie's 90th birthday.
Ritchie's life has been one of music performance, conducting and teaching for which he received a Composers Association of New Zealand citation in 1992.
Professor emeritus at Canterbury University, he is acknowledged as one of this country's most successful composers, and son Anthony, of Dunedin, is also well recognised in a similar career.
The New Zealand String Quartet opened the recital, premiering a work written by Anthony Ritchie to celebrate his father's 90th birthday.
Top in its field, the quartet interpreted the three-section work with passion and mandatory contrast.
Masks, with slow intertwining themes, dissonance, extreme legatos and subtle glissandos; Crisis, with strong agitated character; and the final Catharsis, opening with sturdy texture, to become strident in its dissonance, progressing to fade with the thinnest of controlled tone.
String Quartet, composed in 1962 by John Ritchie, received performances and then lay dormant until revised and published in 2006.
The contrasting four movements follow an autobiographical theme, quite lyrical at times, with constant modal tonality surprises.
The third movement, Life's Work, was notably industrious throughout, but the slow dissonant deliberation of the final Reminiscence tended to be either dreary, or intensely contemplative for the listener, until intriguing final cadential harmony and a long unison fade-out revealed the deliberate poignant dedication to a loved one's enduring pain and suffering before life's end in total peace.
An adaption of Turkey in the Straw, originally written as an encore in the 1960s by the senior Ritchie, now freshly arranged by Ritchie jun, bounced its way cheekily through changing keys and rhythms to end the recital.
