CSM 09: Australian Champter Orchestra / Canberra Horn Consort / McDonald / Barnes / Australian Chamber Orchestra / Pereira
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Item Open Access Barry Conyngham: Cello Concerto (1984) - Movement II(Canberra School of Music, Australian National University, 1984) Composer: Barry Conyngham; Davies, John"Barry Conyngham's Cello Concerto was commissioned by Musica Viva Australia as part of its bicentennial commissioning program and premiered on 24 October-1985 in the concert hall of the Sydney Opera House with Florian Kitt as the soloist. In 1986 the Australian Chamber Orchestra included the concerto in its repertoire for a European tour. Conyngham began work on the concerto in mid-1983, just after finishing the short score of the opera Fly but before he produced the opera's final orchestration. For a time both works overlapped, but the concerto was completed shortly before the date line of Fly, which the composer gives as 2 March 1984. Inevitably there are features which the two works have in common. For example, there are shared rhythmical devices, notably at the start of the concerto's third movement, which matches the opening of the opera. But there are less obvious echoes of the opera's orchestral 'sea and air' effects in the use of frequent changes of time signature to notate irregular accents, and in the particular formation of the short note patterns which occur throughout the concerto. These rapidly reiterated blocks are usually short scaled and short ranged. Often set in opposed motion, they travel in waves from timbre to timbre across the strings, creating a Conyngham trademark traceable as far back as / ce Carving (1971). In the cello concerto these waves oscillate around slow harmonic changes, the pulses smoothly asymmetrical. Universal published the Cello Concerto's full score in 1984 but, after discussions with Florian Kitt, the composer made a number of alterations which are not to be found there. The score gives the minimum orchesation required as four first violins, four second violins, two violas, one cello, one double bass and the solo cello. Uncharacteristically for Conyngham, the three movements are left untitled. He has, in the past, chosen to refer his audience to emotional symbolism via titles derived from Japanese theatre (for Shadows of Noh, the double bass concerto) and popular art (for Ice Carving, the violin concerto) and Australian romantic nationalism (for Southern Cross, the double concerto). Graeme Skinner, friend and student of the composer, wrote in the notes to the first performance: At its simplest, the concerto depicts an individual (the cellist) being shaped by, and in turn shaping, the environment. In at least one instance, the composer refers directly to the dedicatee's (Florian Kitt's) experience. The Austrian cellist is given a counterpoint to the strings' Viennese waltz parody in the third movement, at once highlighting environment and individual response. The opening of the concerto's first movement represents another sort of response, more akin to the forces at work in Michelangelo' s The Slaves, as the cello gradually breaks away from an inexorable repeatednote pattern. On a larger scale, the slow chorale from the middle of the first movement is made [the] subject of transformations later in the work, not least in the third movement's waltz. All three movements present separate, distinct musical statements, but there are also a sustained connectedness and mathematical logic in the drawing out of the closely related materials of each and in the nature of the transformations which is not only observable in the score but apparent in performance. The composer speaks of the work as modelled on traditional forms but developed by register and texture changes, not tonal ones. The first movement opens with an ostinato effect on A flat, which pulses irregularly through a succession of rapidly changing time signatures - 4/8, 6/32, 4/8, 9/32, 4/8, 3/32, 4/8 - in the first seven bars (see Figure 31) a complex visual device, but aurally registered only as smoothly changing rhythm. Written accents highlight the demisemiquaver groupings of four and three. This creates a sense of purposeful urgency out of which the first violins rise, settling into a higher pitched ostinato, leaving the lower strings to travel as before. The soloist then takes up the middle ground between them. Continual shifts from solemnity to playfulness eventually disappear in a slow central section of balletic elongations. The mood becomes trance-like (see Figure 32). The solo cello then takes up an even slower lyric display with brief, scratched-in commentary from the ensemble (see Figure 33). This gradually fills out tonally then suddenly returns to the opening o tinato which develop the original feeling of urgency, deepened into anxiety through thickened harmony. The sustaiaed vocalising of the cello then returns, only to be elegantly swept up in three ascending figures (see Figure 34). The central movement employs sul tasto, sul ponticello and pizzicato and arco techniques (see Figure 35) to create hazy, shimmering impressions sometimes referred to as Conyngham's 'light on water' effect. There is a slow filling out of sighing glissandi (see Figure 36), interrupted by deep cello commands. This dialogue continues until the whole of the strings' tone reinforced pitch undulations come together repeatedly under it, peaking in a four note descending glissando figure emerging on the cello but spreading outwards (see Figure 37). An incisive, melodic cello line finally overwhelms the fluttering excitement of the upper strings. There is a general and diffused climax. A brief downward fall of four notes from the cello precipitates a wry ending. The final movement presents an obsessive, tightly controlled three-against-four rising figure in the first and second violins against a descending three in the violas (see Figure 38). The motive buzzes and rocks until overtaken by deep plungings from the solo cello (see Figure 39). There is a feeling of energy appropriately used in hurrying to some puzzling destination. A long, expressive cadenza breaks through. New sighings, echoing the second movement in feeling, take over, with commentaries by the soloist, using a rising broken figure speaking alone (see Figure 40). The hurrying sense is then revived in a new and complex figure reminiscent of the opening ostinato but coupled with a straight chordal contrast (see Figure 41). The two figures interact repeatedly, then break off for a second, more virtuosic, cadenza. A last, brief variant of the opening races across the last moments of the concerto, swelling twice to a forte and ending with abrupt neatness (see Figure 42)." -- Therese RadicItem Open Access Barry Conyngham: Cello Concerto (1984) - Movement III(Canberra School of Music, Australian National University, 1984) Composer: Barry Conyngham; Davies, John"Barry Conyngham's Cello Concerto was commissioned by Musica Viva Australia as part of its bicentennial commissioning program and premiered on 24 October-1985 in the concert hall of the Sydney Opera House with Florian Kitt as the soloist. In 1986 the Australian Chamber Orchestra included the concerto in its repertoire for a European tour. Conyngham began work on the concerto in mid-1983, just after finishing the short score of the opera Fly but before he produced the opera's final orchestration. For a time both works overlapped, but the concerto was completed shortly before the date line of Fly, which the composer gives as 2 March 1984. Inevitably there are features which the two works have in common. For example, there are shared rhythmical devices, notably at the start of the concerto's third movement, which matches the opening of the opera. But there are less obvious echoes of the opera's orchestral 'sea and air' effects in the use of frequent changes of time signature to notate irregular accents, and in the particular formation of the short note patterns which occur throughout the concerto. These rapidly reiterated blocks are usually short scaled and short ranged. Often set in opposed motion, they travel in waves from timbre to timbre across the strings, creating a Conyngham trademark traceable as far back as / ce Carving (1971). In the cello concerto these waves oscillate around slow harmonic changes, the pulses smoothly asymmetrical. Universal published the Cello Concerto's full score in 1984 but, after discussions with Florian Kitt, the composer made a number of alterations which are not to be found there. The score gives the minimum orchesation required as four first violins, four second violins, two violas, one cello, one double bass and the solo cello. Uncharacteristically for Conyngham, the three movements are left untitled. He has, in the past, chosen to refer his audience to emotional symbolism via titles derived from Japanese theatre (for Shadows of Noh, the double bass concerto) and popular art (for Ice Carving, the violin concerto) and Australian romantic nationalism (for Southern Cross, the double concerto). Graeme Skinner, friend and student of the composer, wrote in the notes to the first performance: At its simplest, the concerto depicts an individual (the cellist) being shaped by, and in turn shaping, the environment. In at least one instance, the composer refers directly to the dedicatee's (Florian Kitt's) experience. The Austrian cellist is given a counterpoint to the strings' Viennese waltz parody in the third movement, at once highlighting environment and individual response. The opening of the concerto's first movement represents another sort of response, more akin to the forces at work in Michelangelo' s The Slaves, as the cello gradually breaks away from an inexorable repeatednote pattern. On a larger scale, the slow chorale from the middle of the first movement is made [the] subject of transformations later in the work, not least in the third movement's waltz. All three movements present separate, distinct musical statements, but there are also a sustained connectedness and mathematical logic in the drawing out of the closely related materials of each and in the nature of the transformations which is not only observable in the score but apparent in performance. The composer speaks of the work as modelled on traditional forms but developed by register and texture changes, not tonal ones. The first movement opens with an ostinato effect on A flat, which pulses irregularly through a succession of rapidly changing time signatures - 4/8, 6/32, 4/8, 9/32, 4/8, 3/32, 4/8 - in the first seven bars (see Figure 31) a complex visual device, but aurally registered only as smoothly changing rhythm. Written accents highlight the demisemiquaver groupings of four and three. This creates a sense of purposeful urgency out of which the first violins rise, settling into a higher pitched ostinato, leaving the lower strings to travel as before. The soloist then takes up the middle ground between them. Continual shifts from solemnity to playfulness eventually disappear in a slow central section of balletic elongations. The mood becomes trance-like (see Figure 32). The solo cello then takes up an even slower lyric display with brief, scratched-in commentary from the ensemble (see Figure 33). This gradually fills out tonally then suddenly returns to the opening o tinato which develop the original feeling of urgency, deepened into anxiety through thickened harmony. The sustaiaed vocalising of the cello then returns, only to be elegantly swept up in three ascending figures (see Figure 34). The central movement employs sul tasto, sul ponticello and pizzicato and arco techniques (see Figure 35) to create hazy, shimmering impressions sometimes referred to as Conyngham's 'light on water' effect. There is a slow filling out of sighing glissandi (see Figure 36), interrupted by deep cello commands. This dialogue continues until the whole of the strings' tone reinforced pitch undulations come together repeatedly under it, peaking in a four note descending glissando figure emerging on the cello but spreading outwards (see Figure 37). An incisive, melodic cello line finally overwhelms the fluttering excitement of the upper strings. There is a general and diffused climax. A brief downward fall of four notes from the cello precipitates a wry ending. The final movement presents an obsessive, tightly controlled three-against-four rising figure in the first and second violins against a descending three in the violas (see Figure 38). The motive buzzes and rocks until overtaken by deep plungings from the solo cello (see Figure 39). There is a feeling of energy appropriately used in hurrying to some puzzling destination. A long, expressive cadenza breaks through. New sighings, echoing the second movement in feeling, take over, with commentaries by the soloist, using a rising broken figure speaking alone (see Figure 40). The hurrying sense is then revived in a new and complex figure reminiscent of the opening ostinato but coupled with a straight chordal contrast (see Figure 41). The two figures interact repeatedly, then break off for a second, more virtuosic, cadenza. A last, brief variant of the opening races across the last moments of the concerto, swelling twice to a forte and ending with abrupt neatness (see Figure 42)." -- Therese RadicItem Open Access Barry Conyngham: Cello Concerto (1984) - Movement I(Canberra School of Music, Australian National University, 1984) Composer: Barry Conyngham; Davies, John"Barry Conyngham's Cello Concerto was commissioned by Musica Viva Australia as part of its bicentennial commissioning program and premiered on 24 October-1985 in the concert hall of the Sydney Opera House with Florian Kitt as the soloist. In 1986 the Australian Chamber Orchestra included the concerto in its repertoire for a European tour. Conyngham began work on the concerto in mid-1983, just after finishing the short score of the opera Fly but before he produced the opera's final orchestration. For a time both works overlapped, but the concerto was completed shortly before the date line of Fly, which the composer gives as 2 March 1984. Inevitably there are features which the two works have in common. For example, there are shared rhythmical devices, notably at the start of the concerto's third movement, which matches the opening of the opera. But there are less obvious echoes of the opera's orchestral 'sea and air' effects in the use of frequent changes of time signature to notate irregular accents, and in the particular formation of the short note patterns which occur throughout the concerto. These rapidly reiterated blocks are usually short scaled and short ranged. Often set in opposed motion, they travel in waves from timbre to timbre across the strings, creating a Conyngham trademark traceable as far back as / ce Carving (1971). In the cello concerto these waves oscillate around slow harmonic changes, the pulses smoothly asymmetrical. Universal published the Cello Concerto's full score in 1984 but, after discussions with Florian Kitt, the composer made a number of alterations which are not to be found there. The score gives the minimum orchesation required as four first violins, four second violins, two violas, one cello, one double bass and the solo cello. Uncharacteristically for Conyngham, the three movements are left untitled. He has, in the past, chosen to refer his audience to emotional symbolism via titles derived from Japanese theatre (for Shadows of Noh, the double bass concerto) and popular art (for Ice Carving, the violin concerto) and Australian romantic nationalism (for Southern Cross, the double concerto). Graeme Skinner, friend and student of the composer, wrote in the notes to the first performance: At its simplest, the concerto depicts an individual (the cellist) being shaped by, and in turn shaping, the environment. In at least one instance, the composer refers directly to the dedicatee's (Florian Kitt's) experience. The Austrian cellist is given a counterpoint to the strings' Viennese waltz parody in the third movement, at once highlighting environment and individual response. The opening of the concerto's first movement represents another sort of response, more akin to the forces at work in Michelangelo' s The Slaves, as the cello gradually breaks away from an inexorable repeatednote pattern. On a larger scale, the slow chorale from the middle of the first movement is made [the] subject of transformations later in the work, not least in the third movement's waltz. All three movements present separate, distinct musical statements, but there are also a sustained connectedness and mathematical logic in the drawing out of the closely related materials of each and in the nature of the transformations which is not only observable in the score but apparent in performance. The composer speaks of the work as modelled on traditional forms but developed by register and texture changes, not tonal ones. The first movement opens with an ostinato effect on A flat, which pulses irregularly through a succession of rapidly changing time signatures - 4/8, 6/32, 4/8, 9/32, 4/8, 3/32, 4/8 - in the first seven bars (see Figure 31) a complex visual device, but aurally registered only as smoothly changing rhythm. Written accents highlight the demisemiquaver groupings of four and three. This creates a sense of purposeful urgency out of which the first violins rise, settling into a higher pitched ostinato, leaving the lower strings to travel as before. The soloist then takes up the middle ground between them. Continual shifts from solemnity to playfulness eventually disappear in a slow central section of balletic elongations. The mood becomes trance-like (see Figure 32). The solo cello then takes up an even slower lyric display with brief, scratched-in commentary from the ensemble (see Figure 33). This gradually fills out tonally then suddenly returns to the opening o tinato which develop the original feeling of urgency, deepened into anxiety through thickened harmony. The sustaiaed vocalising of the cello then returns, only to be elegantly swept up in three ascending figures (see Figure 34). The central movement employs sul tasto, sul ponticello and pizzicato and arco techniques (see Figure 35) to create hazy, shimmering impressions sometimes referred to as Conyngham's 'light on water' effect. There is a slow filling out of sighing glissandi (see Figure 36), interrupted by deep cello commands. This dialogue continues until the whole of the strings' tone reinforced pitch undulations come together repeatedly under it, peaking in a four note descending glissando figure emerging on the cello but spreading outwards (see Figure 37). An incisive, melodic cello line finally overwhelms the fluttering excitement of the upper strings. There is a general and diffused climax. A brief downward fall of four notes from the cello precipitates a wry ending. The final movement presents an obsessive, tightly controlled three-against-four rising figure in the first and second violins against a descending three in the violas (see Figure 38). The motive buzzes and rocks until overtaken by deep plungings from the solo cello (see Figure 39). There is a feeling of energy appropriately used in hurrying to some puzzling destination. A long, expressive cadenza breaks through. New sighings, echoing the second movement in feeling, take over, with commentaries by the soloist, using a rising broken figure speaking alone (see Figure 40). The hurrying sense is then revived in a new and complex figure reminiscent of the opening ostinato but coupled with a straight chordal contrast (see Figure 41). The two figures interact repeatedly, then break off for a second, more virtuosic, cadenza. A last, brief variant of the opening races across the last moments of the concerto, swelling twice to a forte and ending with abrupt neatness (see Figure 42)." -- Therese RadicItem Open Access Vincent Plush: Bakery Hill Rising (1980)(Canberra School of Music, Australian National University, 1980) Composer: Vincent Plush; Davies, JohnBakery Hill Rising is the product of the composer's preoccupation with the idea of republicanism. Plush's piece is based upon two contrasted folksongs. The Duke of Ma;/borough is a relic ofEnglish imperialism, notated and set by Percy Grainger to form his Duke of Marlborough Fanfare, whereas Freedom on the Wallaby i a strident call for republican revolution in Australia: We'll make the tyrants feel the sting Of those that they would throttle; They needn't say the fault is ours If blood should stain the wattle. By quoting Grainger's setting and this Australian folksong Plush establishes a continuity with Australia's political and musical history; yet without a knowledge of the background, the listener might simply hear a set of free variations on two attractive traditional tunes. Bakery Hill Rising calls for solo French horn with eight accompanying horns, which may be either pre-recorded or played live. In addition, one of the horn players doubles on a bass drum and tarn-tarn. The composer dictates the spatial positioning of the accompanying players ( or the loud speakers). Their placement is intended to resemble the Eureka flag, symbol of republican aspirations, which consists of a large silver cross on a dark blue background. This flag is to be hung prominently near the solo player. The composer requires the player to enter having already begun the piece, and to exit while still playing its final bars. As the title suggests, the background to the work is the Eureka Stockade gold miners' riot of 1854 at Bakery Hill, near the Victorian city of Ballarat. The incident at Eureka Stockade arose as a protest against the high cost of miners' licences levied by the colonial authorities. The armed clash that ensued cost the lives of about thirty miners and four soldiers. Whilst various historians have placed differing interpretations on the significance of these events, it remains a unique and symbolic moment in Australian history as the only violent political uprising of its type in pre-Federation history. The work is shaped by freely worked variations on the original melodies. The solo player presents the tunes and related material against a mostly quiet and slowly moving background of the accompanying horns (which are muted for a large part of the work) playing repetitive fragments and sustained chordal material. The extent to which the work is intended to be programmatic can be gauged by the climax of the work at bar 95. The work increases in intensity and textural complexity until a sffz stroke on the bass drum is heard. It is intended, according to the instruction in the score. to sound 'Like a cannon shot'. Although the cannon shot at the chmax may suggest that the work is a kind of antipodean battle piece, it has few other directly descriptive features rather than representing violence in musical form, the restrained and gradual manner in which the work fades away ultimately calls to mind a wistful and nostalgic reminiscence, but not a victory." -- Andrew SchultzItem Open Access Carl Vine: Canzona (1985)(Canberra School of Music, Australian National University, 1985) Composer: Carl Vine; Davies, John"Canzona was commissioned with funding from the Music Board of the Australia Council for the Australian Chamber Orchestra's Gala Tenth Anniversary Concert in the Sydney Opera House Concert Hall on 30 November 1985. By this time the orchestra was regularly using wind, brass and percussion players in its concerts, but Vine's commission was for the permanent core of string players: five first violins, four second violins, two violas, two cellos and a single double bass. This is Vine's note from the concert program: The term 'canzona' is used here in its broadest possible sense as a song for instruments. As the simplest of starting points, then, the chamber orchestra is viewed as a collection of 'singing' instruments, presented either in melody or complex CQUQterpojnt, Although cast in a single movement, the work falls into two principal sections. The first evolves from a stmple melodic development into a slow waltz-like figure. The second is based on a straightforward chord progression that undergoes a eries of convolutions, leading to a Presto finale. The work open with lines of dissonant polyphony whose harmony and sonority recall Bart6k. Hannonically simpler territory is established when pizzicato octaves on cello and double bass introduce a section of expressive meandering polyphony for two solo violins. The tempo is a slow waltz rhythm (this is Vine's 'first section'). These lines of interweaving melody - and three-in-a-bar accompaniment are soon hames edt however, into forceful block chords, and a combination of rapidly increasing tempo, changing metres, energetic dotted rhythms and strong dynamic contrasts brings this section hurtling to a glowingly sonorous cadence. The triple metre is then resumed, but more slowly and with gently sounded syncopations and delicate papery harmonics; above this the solo first violin begins a song full of nostalgic charm which is taken up by a cello in lyrical mid-range. Polyphonic imitations of very simple material and effective triplet chordal ostinati serve as a bridge to a second hearing of this canzona for violin and cello. We have arrived at Vine's 'second section'. A progression of quiet, slow moving legato chords in quadruple metre is immediately restated in dotted rhythms and motoric semiquavers and then, almost inevitably, in swift triplets. Suddenly, however, the sequence of variations disintegrates in a shimmer of ppp trills and harmonics through which fragments of the chordal theme can be fitfully heard: it is as if the ACO's baroque repertory has been ambushed in the Australian musical landscape and one recalls the fate of the colonial music in Sculthorpe' s Port Essington (written for the ACO strings in 1977 and an established favourite in the orchestra's Australian repertory). A little canon for solo violin and viola marks the return to 'civilisation': this is the score's most dazzling section as multiple series of ostinati and scurrying triplet figures rebuild the polyphonic texture and the chordal theme reasserts itselffragment by fragment, phrase by phrase. The theme is then fully restated in two final variations, the first again involving rapid triplets and the second grids of three against two triplets and duplets. The final pages are winningly scored contrasts of massive punctuating chordsĀ· and a repeated three note chord on solo violin and the violas, one note on each instrument. This is the motif which ends the work, a gesture that contains a hint of amused irony." -- Brett Johnson