New Zealand Music Month was marked at Wednesday's lunch-time concert in Marama Hall, with music by New Zealand composers, including some premiere performances.
Soprano Judy Bellingham (with Terence Dennis accompanying) opened with Dads, a poem by Joy Cowley, set to music by Anthony Ritchie in a contemporary lyrical style with recurring passages of lullaby rhythms, to celebrate the birth of the singer's grandson Nixon Peter Grant.
Robbie Ellis (2012 Mozart Fellow) contributed Maeve for piano 6:0. Recorded spoken text from "a disembodied storyteller in the present remembering her past" was taken from Leila Austin's short story Shadow People and received piano accompaniment (John Van Buskirk), both separate and occasionally with the voice.
The piano interpretation was definitely fulfilling and succinct, but the voice annoyed me, and my preference would be live delivery of such thought-provoking sentences.
Third-year student Corwin Newall already has five orchestral works recorded by the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra and is a highly regarded young composer. He performed Fossil Fuel from Sonata No.1 in C minor for piano solo. With ideas conceived as a lament for birds suffering through the Rena shipwreck, the work is strongly programmatic, with clean precise statements and elements of interpretation.
Feby Idrus (flute) premiered Three Waiata for solo flute (2010) by Peter Adams, generally composed in a style of widely spaced intervals punctuated with energetic scalic themes.
The slower third waiata was particularly moving. La Belle Alliance (Tessa Petersen and John van Buskirk) completed the recital with Concert Piece for Violin and Piano by Anthony Watson (1933-73), and Ritchie's Meditation (2008) for violin and piano.
Watson's work employed serialism and, though extremely professionally performed, was heavy going for listeners not enamoured of this genre.
Meditation was a beautiful and imaginative sound-scape originally performed at the opening of Dunedin's Chinese Gardens.
- Elizabeth Bouman.
