MILLENNIUM - The New Zealand Works
J.RITCHIE - Flourish for an Occasion/ Threnody/
GOFFIN - Rhapsody in Brass
RIVE - Colne/ YOUNG - The Enchanted
Dance Hall / PRUDEN - Lambton Quay
Haast Highway/ A.RITCHIE - Down The Brunner Mine/
RIMMER - Millennia LITHGOW -
“Invercargill” March
Woolston Brass
Music Director: David Gallaher
CDWB 3896340/01 KENNETH YOUNG - Symphony (1988)*/
Virgen de la Esperanza (1997)
Dance (1997)
New Zealand Symphony Orchestra
Conductor: Kenneth Young
(item marked* with Patricia Wright, soprano)
Trust/Atoll MMT 2027
reviewed 3/00
It’s an encouraging sign of the times that the Woolston Brass Band has made its CD recording debut with a disc of works by New Zealand composers. A few years ago we would doubtless have been treated to the usual amalgam of brass pot-boilers, such as the “Light Cavalry” and “William Tell” Overtures, with perhaps some “genuine” brass works such as those by Sousa, Holst and Vaughan Williams thrown in for good measure. Instead, we have a collection of pieces representing, in nearly all cases, first-hand responses from local composers to the possibilities afforded by the individual sonorities of a brass band, with only the John Rimmer work being an arrangement of material written for a different medium. Between the ever-popular “Invercargill March” by Alex Lithgow, and John Rimmer’s exploration of other-world sonorities in his “Millennia”, there’s a fascinating array of styles and sounds awaiting investigation.
The disc begins with John Ritchie’s “Flourish for an Occasion” a suitably throat-clearing ceremonial fanfare which admirably ushers in the rest of the programme. Dean Goffin’s “Rhapsody for Brass” is a three-movement band spectacular that’s often been used as a “test-piece” for competitions. The bite and energy of the opening movement, with its concertante mood (some deftly-turned solos here), contrasts well against a slow movement that mischievously picks up its skirts and dances amidst opening and closing episodes of dignity and tranquility; while the finale’s high-spirited galumphings call themselves to order for a brief hymnal before renewing the chase with redoubled speed and frantic energy, all brilliantly brought off by the players. As a counterweight to all of this, there’s Thomas Rive’s “Colne”, a hymn tune which demonstrates the band’s ability to conjure up liquid textures with seamless legato phrasing.
It’s hardly surprising that we hear, at the beginning of Kenneth Young’s “The Enchanted Dance Hall”, a tuba dreaming contented dreams before being roused by its fellow-brasses and told to shake a leg. Deliciously naughty chromatic gurglings accompany the jaunty ghostliness of the music’s opening dance sequences, with textures dissolving and reforming at will as the dancers vary the pace and become as limpid reflections gliding seamlessly across a surface in search of former glories. All substance is illusion, however, as the music’s increasing animation turns surreal, with galumphing grotesqueries signalling an explosion of Dadaist frenzy, complete with ghostly mutterings of voices and droll percussion punctuations. As quickly as it began, the anarchy disperses, leaving “did I wake or sleep?” musings to dreamily bring the piece to a close. John Ritchie’s “Thredony”, a tribute to a past band music director, Mervyn Waters, uses sombre colours and textures rather more than melodic interest to hold one’s attention. By contrast, Larry Pruden’s two works positively teem with colourful ideas, the jaunty “Lambton Quay” evoking a tumbling warmth which changing times have sadly corporatised along Wellington’s most famous street. And “Haast Highway” conjures up a wonderful sense of space and big country at the outset, alternated with rhythmic energies conveying something of the enormous efforts of roadmakers pushing through rugged landscapes. Admittedly, some of the piece’s central musings seem to me to drift in and out of focus rather disconsolately, but these are rounded up, trussed together and, with the help of some jazzy syncopations, driven for all they’re worth towards a suitably festive conclusion.
“Down The Brunner Mine” is one of the most compelling things I’ve heard of Anthony Ritchie’s, with powerful, evocative music building surely towards a grimly expressive climax, every section of the band having its viewpoint of the story’s tragic content. John Rimmer’s “Millennia” conjures up vast spaces, huge areas of dimly-lit conjecture, with mysterious energy-forces received in the form of glissandi, oscillations, and sound-clusters. Fanfare-like figures suggest adventure and exploration, journeyings into unchartered areas, whose darkly suspended resonances call to mind Wagner’s Act One Prelude to “Siegfried”. Shooting-star irruptions vie with toccata-like chatter as the growing excitement is crowned by a flurry of spectacular ascents and a final crashing chord which puts an end to all.
In conclusion, there’s Alex Lithgow’s “Invercargill March”, performed here with all the swagger and sense of occasion that one would expect. It makes a fitting finale to a fascinating and invaluable compendium, with many of the pieces here receiving their first recording. For people who would normally say that brass band music isn’t their thing (myself among that number), the disc should come as something of an ear-opener, as much for the playing and recording as for the music.
The Kenneth Young work on the Woolston disc provides a link with another CD, a joint venture from Trust Records and Atoll (MMT 2027) given entirely to the same composer’s music. On the new disc there’s a Symphony in four movements, as well as two other orchestral works, one inspired by an encounter in Seville Cathedral with a statue of the Blessed Virgin, and the other simply entitled “Dance”. Already well-known as a conductor with some fine recordings and memorable live performances to his credit (most notably a Messiaen “Turangalila” Symphony performance that put in the shade any other I’d heard on disc), Young seems assured of making his mark as a composer with these and other works, such as a Tuba Concerto (1976), Quintet for Brass (1981), Sinfonietta (1985) and Fantasy for Two Pianos (1986).
The Symphony (1988), to date Young’s most ambitious composition, is an unashamedly tonal work, drawing skilfully on a varied palatte of orchestral colour to express a wide range of emotions. It’s music which owes more to Mahler than to Lilburn, interestingly enough, being far less preoccupied with interaction between sensibilities and surroundings and more with processes that take place between elements within those sensibilities. The first movement uses a four-note phrase to help delineate a psychological journey of some import, from the opening’s gradual awakening, through episodes which set barely-contained agitation against helter-skeltering panic towards a heart-stopping moment when a soprano voice cries enough and silences the tumult. Throughout even the most heavily-scored passages, Young the orchestrator and Young the conductor secure between them textures of the utmost luminosity, with nothing sounding thick or ungainly. Spectral glissandi and col legno strings set the movement’s concluding Andante in motion, becalming the unease and letting the four-note phrase softly play itself out.
If some of the manic helter-skeltering string/wind lines of the first movement bring To mind the Messiaen of “Turangalila”, it’s Bartok whose spirit appears to be peering around the music’s corners in the second movement. Strings and winds play with folksy melodic fragments and arabesques, occasionally having to withstand threatening blasts of disapproval from brass and percussion, but managing to survive the onslaughts. Again, the orchestral playing’s poised and eloquent, detail finely etched in and climactic points unerringly weighted. The adagio movement’s indomitable forward pulse leads the musical argument onwards to an Erda-like brass recitative that seems to open the earth’s depths and call forth a string thredony of the utmost sombre beauty, which the brass intensify - a wonderful, heartfelt moment, mirrored by a brief, sundrenched blossoming of string-lines over the music’s translucent waters. Finally a solo violin takes the lead, rhapsodising at some length, and leading the way towards a safe haven. As in Vaughan Williams’ “Pastoral” Symphony, the finale’s set in motion by a wordless soprano line (Patricia Wright in beautifully ethereal voice, here) answered by the strings in glowing colours. The voice returns at various times during the movement, a process which reaches a climactic point when the orchestra takes over from the last thrilling note of one of the soprano’s phrases and builds layer upon layer of sound towards an outburst of Straussian opulence. The full-blooded playing here put me in mind of Franz-Paul Decker’s best performances with the orchestra in recent years of the late-Romantic repertoire, which the NZSO seems to be able to do so well under a conductor who knows what’s what. Afterwards everything is painted in valedictory hues, experience re-engaged in tranquility, with the soprano voice having the last (wordless) word.
Further evidence of creative, interpretative and performing skills on the part of both orchestra and conductor comes with “Virgen de la Esperanza” (Virgin of Hope), music inspired by a statue of the Virgin which Young encountered on a visit to Spain. It’s a compositional tour de force, very much a progression from darkness to light, with not a note wasted or used unnecessarily. Young speaks of Durufle’s music as an inspiration in this case, though texturally this work seems to me to owe less to other people’s music than either the Symphony or “Dance”. Its sound-world is much its own, from the beginning’s eerie, even sinister evocations, and the impassioned melodic plea for enlightenment, which grows out of the darkness and provokes a furious all-out orchestral assault, to the calm after the storm, whose violence leaves exhausted fragments with barely enough energy to gather themselves and re-affirm hope’s message.
Finally, there’s “Dance”, a 1997 work written for Young’s wife, Dolly, who, according to the composer, inspired within him “alive, vibrant, rhythmic and joyous musical ideas…on a regular basis - all in 9/8 and based around a tonal centre of A Major”. A slow waltz leads a processional through golden, horn-drenched realms towards a vigorous and joyful awakening with energetic, Messiaen-like melodic flourishes augmented by shouts from the brass. Differently-paced sequences slow aerobic rates sufficiently for the themes to register as lyrical statements, but the energy and momentum of the music can’t be denied, finding orgiastic expression over the work’s final exuberant pages.
It may seem as though I’ve occasionally forgotten to “review” these performances, so engagingly does the music invite involvement in the enjoyment of description. But I can’t imagine anybody not responding in some way to these works by Kenneth Young and to the enthusiasm and skills of the musicians involved with their presentation. The recording engineers, too, have managed to transcend the limitations of the venue, the former Symphony House in Wellington, capturing a full, rich sound that serves the music well.
Both of these discs in their own way serve notice that there’s plenty of local creative spirit at work, making attempts at expressing, in Douglas Lilburn’s words, the “pleasant or unpalatable truths of experience”. And the sterling stewardship of organisations such as Trust Records and Atoll, enabling the work of local composers to be captured and heard on a regular basis, can’t help but further music’s cause in this country, as well as give the new millennium’s music-lovers plenty of things to look forward to.