Born
in 1915, Judith Wright became one of Australia’s most important
poets. Her work is striking both for the power with which
it confronts the relations between Man and Nature and for
the almost daring sensitivity with which it deals with
human love. Her best work has a precision of language and
an impressive formal sense. She became a vigorously active
environmentalist and a campaigner for aboriginal land rights,
especially in the last forty years of her life (she died
in 2000). It is right and proper that her work should have
attracted the attention of Australian composers and this
interesting CD samples some of the resulting settings.
As
well as settings of individual songs there are two song-cycles
here. Margaret Sutherland’s
6 Australian Songs is
perhaps unified (textually) only by the sensibility of
its common source. Here are Wright’s responsiveness to
the natural world (‘Bullocky’, ‘Winter Kestrel’), her powerful
love poetry (‘Woman’s Song’) and her characteristic compassion
(‘The Twins’, ‘The Old Prison’). Here, too, is her almost
mystical fascination with the paradoxically illuminative
power of darkness (‘Midnight’), with its tremendous opening
stanza, both very personal and deeply traditional:
Darkness
where I find my sight,
shadowless
and burning night,
here
where death and life are met
is
the fire of being set.
In
1923 Sutherland visited Europe, spending time in Vienna
and London especially, where she was befriended by Sir
Arnold Bax. She returned to Australia in 1925 and was,
for the rest of her life, a potent presence in the musical
life of her homeland. She was a modernist by inclination,
and a woman; two facts which did little to endear her to
the Australian establishment. Recognition of her work came
pretty late in her life. 1997 saw the publication of David
Symons’ book
The Music of Margaret Sutherland (Currency
Press, Sydney), which argues that she was the first native
Australian to work, in Australia, in idioms akin to those
of her contemporaries in Europe. Symons’ book contains
an excellent discussion of Sutherland’s solo songs. These
settings of Wright have some quirky harmonies, some unexpected
melodic leaps and display a highly intelligent responsiveness
to the details of the texts. There are many very effective
moments of word painting, but such details are never allowed
to obscure a larger musical logic.
In
his booklet notes Gordon Kerry suggestively describes Richard
Mills’
Woman to Man as “a kind of Australian
Frauenliebe
und –leben”. What he means, I take it, is that in his
choice of texts – using poems collected between 1946 and
1953 - Mills has created a female testimony to the experience
of love (and Wright’s poems are surely not inferior to
those of Adalbert Von Chamisso). The settings by Mills,
who studied with Edmund Rubbra, are everywhere sympathetic,
rising to moments of great intensity, well performed by
Elizabeth Campbell and Ian Munro. The setting of Wright’s ‘A
Song to Sing You’ is particularly fine, the text’s self-referential
allusions to its own creation are nicely handled and the
piano part, in particular, responds unobtrusively to the
poem’s extensive imagery from nature.
Of
the individual poems by Wright, Margaret Sutherland’s setting
of ‘The World and the Child’ is the most substantial. What
must be the same performance was previously issued on Tall
Poppies TP116 (see
review),
who pointed to affinities with Britten, Arnold Cooke and
William Alwyn in the attempt to give an idea of the way
it works. It is a fine piece, in which the writing for
string trio is quite lovely, not least in a brief instrumental
postlude. ‘The World and the Child’ brings the best out
of Elizabeth Campbell; a moving meditation on childhood
innocence and experience, on death and the world, it is,
for me, the highlight of this CD, a minor masterpiece which
deserves to be far better known.
‘The
Lost Man’ is an arrangement for voice and piano of a setting
which appears in the Second Symphony by Ross Edwards. It
is done with subtlety and restraint, for all the rich abundance
of Wright’s language. I should like to hear the Symphony
of which it is part. Ian Munro’s two settings are thoroughly
assured – the piano writing in ‘The Forest’ is especially
effective – but perhaps they add less to one’s understanding
of their texts than is the case with some of the works
already discussed. The same is true of Moya Henderson’s
brief setting of ‘Woman’s Song’, written as a canon
for 4-part women's choir – here all parts are sung by Elizabeth
Campbell.
There
is nothing here that is less than interesting, and the
work of Margaret Sutherland is outstanding. Elizabeth Campbell
sings with astute understanding and technical certainty
and Ian Munro does a magnificent job as accompanist. Full
texts are included.
Glyn Pursglove
Elizabeth
Campbell (mezzo), Ian Munro (piano); * Elizabeth Campbell
(mezzo), Marina Marsden (violin), Justine Wickham
(viola), Susan Blake (cello); ** Elizabeth Campbell (mezzo) 
