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This wide-ranging conspectus
of Australian chamber works derives
from the archives of the Seymour Group
and the Australia Ensemble. The chamber
musicians are part of the Tall Poppies
Ensemble who meet for recordings, arranged
by the company, and who also have the
opportunity to undertake solo recitals
as well. Tall Poppies always throws
up eclectic, thought-provoking material
and their commitment to Australian music
is a long lasting one.
Red Earth (the title
of the album) is a piece by Colin Bright
that utilises features of landscape
and of Aboriginal music – insistent,
with constant interplay, it exemplifies
a didgeridoo technique of note juxtaposition,
but there are also moments of reprieve
from the insistence – mysterious drone
passages, chimes and a sense of quiet
withdrawal and concentration. Bright
of course is very much with us but Peggy
Glanville-Hicks died over a decade ago.
Her pithy comments about her own Concertino
da Camera are thankfully reprinted here
as no one could top them. "Neo
classicism is at best a chromium plated
brownstone (a snappy resurfacing job
that fools no real modern)" she
writes, disavowing her neo classical
Concertino written in 1948 and marking
her swan song to the "strait-jackets
of both Vienna and Paris." It’s
in three movements, bright and light
with piano to the fore in the Allegretto
and with vague hints
of Martinů in the Adagio.
Neil Currie wrote Ortigas
Avenue to mark the fall of the Marcos
government in the Philippines in 1986.
As with Bright and Aboriginal music
so Currie has utilised Filipino folk
music, opening with a high flute solo
and musing between jagged faux minimalist
drive and drama – a decisive, alarming
percussive thunderclap against which
the flute falters – and some tensile
writing, jaggedly oppositional, before
becoming increasingly affirmatory and
percussion- rich. Lumsdaine’s Bagatelles
sit at the heart of this recital. There
are eight and were written in 1985 for
a variety of players, solo, duo, trio
and quartet. It’s hard not to ascribe
emotive states to these spare, communing
works. The first is melancholy, the
second purposeful and full of life tinged
with moments of restraint (flute writing
of coiling animation) whilst the third
faces the future and the past with easy
clarity. It’s actually very romantic.
A baroque tread haunts the fifth, much
the longest; it’s flecked with neo-classicism
but the effect is not neo-classical,
rather the baroque pillars seem to dissolve
into playful modernity. The sixth evokes
a Bach solo Cello suite but again has
its contrary moments of folk incisiveness
– formality and informality in living
conjunction whilst the complex seriousness
of the eighth and final Bagatelle opens
out lyrically to sweep up more veiled
baroque music. Lumsdaine contributes
his own quizzical note, wondering whether
he’s written eight or actually nine
bagatelles hinting that "those
fragments come from music whose subject
matter is other music" – maybe
a hint for obtuse reviewers and listeners.
Whatever his music may or may not be
about it’s the most absorbing, thought
provoking on the disc.
Ross Edwards’ Shadow
D Zone – only the composer seems to
know why it’s called that; the note
writer admits he doesn’t – and this
is a still, contemplative work with
moments of concentrated intensity. Finally
there is Vincent Plush’s On Shooting
Stars, subtitled Homage to Victor Jara
- the Chilean folk singer and poet murdered
in 1973. There are three movements each
based on Jara’s own music and that embrace
both the colour and drama of Jara’s
original music as overlain by Plush’s
own. The most turbulent is the last,
which represents the Chilean coup –
fascinating sonorities and unsettling
percussive interjections – we even hear
Jara himself singing before a stark
representation of his torture is enacted
– the flute of his voice silenced brutally
by vicious rasps like biblical scourges.
Political, geographical,
playful, light-footed, this disc covers
a lot of ground. Despite it all however
it’s Lumsdaine’s little prismic statements
that linger most and evoke the vortex
of memory.
Jonathan Woolf
Tall Poppies Ensemble