FANFARES FOR A NEW MILLENNIUM
Fanfares by: Christopher BLAKE
Auckland!, Eve de CASTRO ROBINSON
Other echoes, John RIMMER
Vulcan, Juliet
PALMER Secret Arnold, John
PSATHAS Luminous, Lisa
MERIDAN-SKIPP firecracker,
John ELMSLY Resound!,
Dorothy BUCHANAN Peace,
Chris CREE BROWN Y2K
Pacemaker, Philip DADSON
MAYA, David HAMILTON
Zarya.
Auckland
Philharmonia/Miguel Harth-Bedoya, James Sedares, Nicholas Braithwaite, Kazufumi
Yamashita, Samuel Wong, Edvard Tchivzhel, Vladimir Verbitsky, Yip Wing-Sie,
Anthony Halstead
rec Auckland Town Hall, 1999-2000
Atoll ACD 100
[56.07]
www.atoll.co.nz
OK, so the millennium celebrations and all the attendant hype are now well
and truly over. Your first reaction on reading the heading above might well
be to click that mouse button and quickly move on to the next review. But
hold fast! Here is an extraordinary CD that will doubtless rate as one
of my records of the year and deserves a hearing from anyone with the slightest
interest in contemporary music.
In 1998 the Auckland Philharmonia commissioned eleven fanfares from local
New Zealand born or based composers to be premiered by the orchestra in the
year leading up to 31st December 1999 and the turn of the millennium.
Each fanfare was to be approximately three minutes long and both reflect
the composer's feelings about the twentieth century as well as give a vision
for the future.
The end result, as captured on this CD, is a triumph for all concerned and
calls into question, once again, the easy assumption by those of us in the
North that the serious- music art form is neither extensively practised nor
as fully developed in the Southern Hemisphere. On this evidence New Zealand,
in particular, is rich in remarkably talented composers, any one of which
needs to be taken as seriously as (say) a Thomas Adès, James MacMillan,
Eino Rautavaara, Aaron Jay Kernis, John Adams or Poul Ruders. Indeed, in
each of the five-minute fanfares (few of the composers were able, understandably,
to meet the three minute deadline) one senses a freedom of expression in
the post-modernist genre that can hardly be matched by their more famous
American and European counterparts. The slight feeling of guilt that is found
in so much northern post-modern music, coming, as it does, straight out of
the seventy year stranglehold of the modernists and the new Vienna school,
is entirely absent in these superbly confident and brilliantly crafted miniature
tone poems.
None of the works on this CD is a fanfare as we would usually term it; there
are no simple brass/drum pieces such as Copland's great Fanfare for the Common
Man nor are there the kind of things heard at civil, military or religious
ceremonies. Each composer has written a short work in a style of his or her
own and all of them are miracles of compression and depth.
After Christopher Blake's Auckland! - a superb opening piece
conducted by James Sedares and recorded in March 2000, Atoll's producers
have bravely presented the live recordings in the exact order of performance
throughout the year 1999. Remarkably this works perfectly; there is no feeling
that a different order would have been preferable.
Each piece has enormous amounts to offer and none of them feel like
a five-minute work.
Eve de Castro-Robinson's Other echoes is a fine example of
contemporary compositional style with tremendous use of colour from the high
bassoons, scordatura-sounding violin, and wind choirs. John Rimmer's
Vulcan is one of only two more modernistic pieces to be found on this
disc, but nevertheless is as exciting as any, with repeated melodic threads
and fascinating orchestrations. Juliet Palmer (one of four women composers
featured here) has provided a wonderfully conceived and written piece,
Secret Arnold, as her 'end-of-century remix of Schoenberg, Randy (Chin)
and Portishead'.
The longest piece on the CD at six and a half minutes is John Psathas's
Luminous which explores the subject of global travel (a largely twentieth
century invention) using long block chords of shifting harmonies, leading,
through a huge crescendo, to the sudden emergence of a simple major chord
which manages to clarify meaning without in any way sounding corny. The only
slight disappointment with this CD is the lack of biographies of the composers,
although they each write their own short introductions to their pieces. We
are told, however, that Lisa Meridan-Skipp was included as a result
of winning the Auckland Philharmonia's Century Fanfare Competition for 'younger
composers'. Whatever her exact age, her firecracker is a miniature
masterpiece with the screaming rockets (high) and bangers (low) beautifully
pictured in the context of time moving inexorably past - with small bells
and chimes.
Dorothy Buchanan's Peace would be a great concert opener for
any orchestra. A dance-like rhythm is immediately established on small bongo-like
drums which never cease throughout. Above this 'terra firma' hang great brass
and string chords which had my spine tingling. One aspect which is common
to all of these pieces is use of instrumental colour and Peace is
a fine example of this. John Elmsly's Resound! and Chris
Cree Brown's Y2K Pacemaker both create tremendous excitement,
the latter mocking (correctly as it turned out) the 'bizarre reactions' and
paranoia created by fears of the millennium bug. The 'frenzied apprehension'
is brilliantly portrayed by screaming violins and somewhat nauseous downward
slides from the brass.
The last two works on the CD ultimately sum up the whole. In a pair of
masterpieces Philip Dadson's MAYA thoroughly entertains, again
with maximum use of colour, with driven motifs from at least two bass trombones,
strings, percussion and tympani. The audience's (slightly early) applause
and cheering is thoroughly deserved as it is for David Hamilton's
Zarya which, with subtle but not pervading influences from film composer
John Williams, provides a five minute continuous crescendo, full of affirmation
for the future and incorporating an organ-based harmonic shift of great effect
to describe the rising of the sun on a world, not greatly changed, perhaps,
by the mere change of 'significant' date but, nevertheless, shining on a
human race questing for knowledge.
Apart from James Sedares, none of the conductors is well known to European
and American audiences. They all do a fine job as does the extraordinary
Auckland Philharmonia who gave these ten live performances over a mere six
month period. Their playing is world-class. It would be good to see European
and American orchestras being prepared to commit to such a challenge.
Whoever was responsible for setting up this series, arranging for the recordings
and, in particular, choosing the composers, deserves the highest possible
praise. The sound engineers of 'Concert FM' provide brilliant hi-fi sound
(try MAYA for example), yet did this over eleven different concerts!
If this CD was on a major label, differently titled for a post-millennium
audience, and properly marketed it could and should be a major best-seller.
But, for now, rush to acquire this disc as soon as you possibly can. For
it too faces the march of time.
Simon Foster
Performance
Sound
Collections of fanfares are if not unheard of at least unusual. There have
been previous collections. I can think of the RCA anthology of British fanfares
reissued on Chandos and the Koch anthology based on those commissioned by
Eugene Goossens in the 1940s.
The present anthology is taken from concert performances of works for full
orchestra. They strain at the bounds of what we expect from a Fanafere. All
are lucidly recorded with great resonance and with applause. The composers
are not household names in the international concert world. The Blake is
a work of fresh grandeur. The Castro-Robinson reflects flighty modernism:
Ariel careering around the skies with hints of Pettersson, Messiaen, Rautavaara
(those arctic birds are very familiar) and Turnage. Rimmer's grim gruff brassy
expostulation took me back to Arthur Butterworth's Symphony No. 1 - especially
the finale. Palmer's work is oddly titled, a rich Schoenbergian mix with
The Wailers it wont come easy and Only You by Portishead. More
attractive than you might imagine. Psathas's work is a Petterssonian lament
for a friend who moved from New Zealand to China but was overwhelmed by the
pressure to assimilate into a culture so radically different. The Meridan-Skipp
work is fragmentary - flooded with explosive squeals and ringing ticking
effects. The Elmsly bends minimalism with Arnold like lyrical release and
percussive rush. The Buchanan is alive with sounds associated with Pacific
culture, woody drum rhythms, Gareth Farr's excitement and Lilburn's Sibelian
rise and fall. Much the same qualities seem at first to shake and shimmer
through MAYA with added pepper and with shouts by the men of the orchestra
however this seems a rough draft rather than fully conceived statement. Brown
harries us with piercing bird shriek string figures and angry brass - not
the most appealing work on the disc. Hamilton uses the Russian word for 'sunrise'
in a five minute crescendo rising from a crystalline pp, developing
with rustling vitality and punchy affirmation into the rolling fanfares so
typical of Lilburn and Hanson.
None of these works are archetype fanfares. They might just as easily be
called tone poems. They are challenging but yield results with moderately
rugged persistence.
Rob Barnett
In case of difficulty available from Atoll ltd, PO Box 99039, Newmarket,
Auckland, New Zealand.
www.atoll.co.nz
atoll@atoll.co.nz - fax +64
9 529 9207
