RECORD REVIEWS
repertoire piece for numerous choirs of lesser attainment
. than the St Peter's Chorale (provided that the 'harmonic
singing' component can be taken to be optional). Though
what they would use it for is another question. Without
wanting to stress its religious qualities too far, it has the
potential to be more than just a concert piece ...
At first, I felt a little sorry for Stephen Leek. His three
Songs of Sea, Space and Sky, which open the disc, must
have entailed a good deal more hard work than Hopkins
spent over her piece. And yet they are considerably less
impressive.
Fortunately, however, Leek is also represented by a
fine 7 -movement cycle Once on a Mountain, which not
only attempts but achieves.
In terms of basic musical language, Leek (born in
1959) is as much a traditionalist as his elders, Brumby or
Nickson, this despite his occasional forays into alternative
vocal teChniques (glissandos, percussive
sounds etc). One gets the feeling, anyway,
that gestures in this direction are more for TIMES
Austwlian Com/)owr.~
the amusement (and education) of his young '\-hLliL of Roh,'J1 AUU,())lh - Ann Can-B()~,'d
singers than fully thought-out compositional Eri.: Grms ... Dilk ie ] [ollwH!
gambits, experimental rather than organic, Eric Austin Ph iUij)s - Ian SiwnaiJ.(ll1
and perhaps after all unnecessary.
Anyway, why bother, when you can
produce - using only the most traditional of
. means - a movement like 'And straightaway'?
Choral music of the quality of the best [
in Once on a Mountain is certainly hard to
come by. And listening to the extended,
meditative, 'Across the pool', I began to
:\,.in;~ " H ' ~~ 'I't : ~ P.:!!l H i~'~; :~'l" .. M:~ "J"h~-:
expect for the first time that Leek may soon
be capable of something on a par with that
so far solitary eminence of Australian choral
originality, Boyd's As I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams.
As a foil, the final piece in Leek's cycle, 'It twinkled
to him', is a boppy example of home-grown post-
minimalism. And along with Hopkins' quite different
piece, it shows off the real talents (and I suspect enthusiasms)
of the young singers of the St Peter's Chorale to the fullest
measure.
Times Remembered
Robert Allworth, Ann Carr-Boyd, Eric Gross,
Dulcie Holland, Eric Austin Phillips, Ian
Shanahan . meditative accompaniment for the taking of Communion.
The Melba Trio (3 Oboes): Jane stacy, Seng Tong &
Carolyn Hayes; The Sydney Mandolins, directed by
Adrian Hopper with Michael Scoff, flute; The
Queensland Symphony Orchestra, conducted by
Patrick Thomas; Lawrence BartleH, organ; Ian
Shanahan, recorders; Adrian at Paul Hooper,
mandolins.
EVASOUND JACD 1022
> Total Playing Time: 71'08"
CD $10.95
Reviewed by Peter Platt
This is a miscellany of mostly short pieces - one long
one - by Australian composers all still in full flight.
Performances are good to excellent and the music is well
recorded and engineered - something of a feat, as the
SOUNDS AUSTRALIAN, AUTUMN 1992
twelve pieces were recorded on ten different dates between
1973 and 1990, and by several different agencies, mostly
the ABC and EMI Studios. The sound is good and gives
a much more than adequate chance to experience the music.
Apart from the lists of pieces, time-length, players and
provenance of the recordings, there are no program notes.
No doubt this is a result of lack of funds, but it's a pity:
one would like to know more of the composers' intentions
and aspirations.
The title Times Remembered refers to the fact that
many of the pieces were written and/or recorded some
time ago - many of them indeed appear quite regularly on
broadcast programs. Four were commissioned by Adrian
Hooper for The Sydney Mandolins or for his brother Paul
and himself. (The Hoopers have added greatly to the
corpus of music for the medium). The range of pieces on
the disc covers not only a variety of media but practically
every type of short piece and (probably) every sort of
reason for which short pieces
RE~{EMBERED come to be written.
Thus Ann Carr-Boyd's
. highly competent Mandoli n
Music and Fandango (also for
Mandolins) are no doubt
primarily music for
entertairunent with a basically
dominant-tonic harmonic idiom,
yet there is an evident delight in
exploring the pungent, jangly
medium of the mandolin group
(to say nothing of their expert
playing). Fandango's main
..
;. ;W,' kIKr: n;l ~rt ' l'! - n r ~: \ :'
theme is maybe musically
1.:" :":'h,I ~:.: h:I :~ - R<( (::~.h' !"
~,-h 11;1::1 FI::I ~'
SI"'\11 - predictable (though the transfer
of a Spanish idiom to the medium
has a curiously Bouzouki-like effect - a witty bit of cross-
culturalism perhaps) but the middle section is a quiet blue-
note delight. Melbourne composer Eric Austin Phillips '
Nirthanjali comes across likewise as very competently
written entertairunent music, though, again, the music has
substance, and here there's an exotic twist to the melodic
idiom: the title, I understand, refers to a Sri Lankan festival.
Michael Scott plays with the Mandolins, and with fine
musicianship, dazzlingly in the second, wilder, part of the
piece.
Dulcie Holland's joyful Verset for organ, finely played
here by Lawrence Bartlett, was apparently written as a
Straightforward in harmonic idiom it may be, but its fine
contrapuntal craft and calm beauty lift it beyond mere
Gebrauchsmusik.
Ian Shanahan's two tiny dazzlers for solo recorder,
expertly played by the composer, begin from the opposite
standpoint - that of exploring the new. Reference to the
more conventional is incidental to the main design; Cathy's
Song for sopranino explores Messiaenic additive metres
and wayward scale-formations, and Helical Ribbon for
alto is a delicate study in multiphonics. The pieces, which
add decisively to the repertoire, are to be published soon
by Currency Press in the second volume of Ben Thorn's
Recorders at Large series .
Robert Allworth, whose enthusiasm for Australian music
and hard work brought all this together, is something of
an enigma as a composer. His prevailing constructive
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