Series 2 (Discs 16 to 21)

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Open Access
Allan Walker: Six Scenes for Flute and Piano (1992)
(Canberra School of Music, Australian National University, 1992) Composer: Allan Walker; McSullea, Mardi; Harvey, Michael Kieran; Grafton-Greene, Michael
"The origin of Six Scenes is a collection of pieces for clarinet and piano. This new form for flute and piano invited changes to the original pieces, so some were extended, and most demanded substantial recomposition in order to maintain convincing harmonies, melodic shapes and a balanced sound. The pieces are very simple - essentially composition studies - each briefly exploring a different musical idea. The common thread is the same source pitch material (an ordered twelve-tone collection) which tends to create recurring melodic and harmonic patterns. The Scenes are: i) a recitative; ii) an embellished, shared line; iii) an aphorism; iv) gradually changing pitch fields defined by notes in fixed registers; v) a texture of four elements: staccato chords, rapid ornamentation, and two melodies; and vi). a dance which vaporises." -- Allan Walker
Open Access
Dagh for solo trumpet
(Canberra School of Music, Australian National University) Composer: Larry Sitsky; Sitsky, Larry; Grafton-Greene, Michael
"Sitsky writes: After two visits to Russia, which included Armenia, sometime in the late seventies, I fell under the sway of Armenian music, with its fascinating cross between Byzantine and Indian musics. The melodies of Armenian sacred and profane music are melismatic, elaborate, highly expressive; the rhythms often asymmetric and changeable. All this suited my personal rhapsodic style, and in 1984, during a year devoted to composition [while on a full-time Australia Council Composer Fellowship], I produced a large number of pieces for solo wind, all inspired by Armenia. Dagh, which is an Armenian word meaning 'hymn', was written for the trumpeter Paul Plunkett, then a Lecturer in the Brass Department at the Canberra School of Music. It is in four movements: 1. Andante con moto; 2. Con moto spirito, dance-like; 3. Allegretto; 4. Rhapsodically, with virtuosity. This recording was made some ten years ago. In the intervening period, the original digital session tape has suffered from ageing." -- Peter Campbell
Open Access
David Worrall: Air (1993)
(Canberra School of Music, Australian National University, 1993) Composer: David Worrall; McSullea, Mardi; Harvey, Michael Kieran; Grafton-Greene, Michael
"Air was commissioned by Mardi McSullea with assistance from the Australia Council. The piece is in two movements, opening with an Alap, a prelude movement for solo flute in which the musical materials (from key-clicks and other noises to multiphonics) of the work are gradually exposed. It is played with a sense of drama and intensity. The flute is amplified with some reverberation. The second movement is an improvisation for live flute and computer-controlled streams of sampled and transformed flute sounds. In preparation for performance, the flautist and electronicist plan the improvisation within the guidelines given. They select one or more subsets of samples, and prepare separate disks accordingly." -- David Worrall
Open Access
David Worrall: Cords 2b (1994)
(Canberra School of Music, Australian National University, 1994) Composer: David Worrall; Grafton-Greene, Michael
"In its original form, Cords (1992) is a polymedia performance work for real-time computer animation and computer music using digital feedback techniques. In the original version, which I made with a student of mine, Virginia Read, the music emanates from 16 channels of loudspeakers in a portable performance space: a seven-metre-radius geodesic hemisphere, and the images are projected on large screens encircling the audience. Cords 2b is a stereo sound-only realisation with more sophisticated real-time analysis and response algorithms. The work is in three movements, a plucked drone softly pulsing throughout: I. Plucked string sounds with accelerando/decelerando percussion accompaniment; II. Percussion solo featuring simultaneous lines, each with different tempo schemes; III. Bowed string sounds with percussion accompaniment. The work was/is composed and performed using the composers real-time composition/performance software Streamer." -- David Worrall
Open Access
Don Banks: Three Episodes for Flute and Piano (1964)
(Canberra School of Music, Australian National University, 1964) Composer: Don Banks; McSullea, Mardi; Harvey, Michael Kieran; Grafton-Greene, Michael
"These pieces were written in London for the Australian expatriate flautist Douglas Whittiker. The writing in each of the Episodes is highly gestural, with small rhythmically-charged motives shifting between the two players. The challenges of working independently-motivated freedoms and intricate ensemble co-ordination runs through the three pieces. The influence of jazz, Bankss own latent humour and imagination (particularly for colour) and the focussed play of rhythmic elements makes for chamber music of power and subtlety." -- Mardi McSullea
Open Access
Donald Hollier: Variations On A Theme Of Sitsky (1970)
(Canberra School of Music, Australian National University, 1970) Composer: Donald Hollier; Schneider, Rotraud; Herscovitch, Daniel; Painter, John; Stines, Niven
"The idea for this work came from a row of twelve notes which Sitsky employs in his Dimensions for Piano and Two Tape Recorders. Each performance of Dimensions involves the pianist in hours of preparation, arranging the cutting, splicing and designing of tiny fragments of pre-recorded piano sound for the two tape recorder parts. In 1968 I gave two public performances and made an ABC recording of Dimensions. The experience made me curious to see if this rather dry series of notes would do anything else, and I resolved to write a work on the same row, exploiting instead its melodic, and often romantic, potential. Thus I chose a series of variations for violin and piano, giving each variation a title. The theme is a harmonic arrangement of the row, followed by the movements, Invention, Aria, Passacaglia, Recitative and Fugetta. Variations on a Theme of Sitsky was commissioned by the Beecroft Music Club, and was completed in 1970." -- Donald Hollier
Open Access
Fantasia No 10 for double keyboard piano
(Canberra School of Music, Australian National University) Composer: Larry Sitsky; Sitsky, Larry; Grafton-Greene, Michael
"A Bechstein-Moor double-keyboard (Duplex-Coupler) grand piano was brought to Australia by Winifred Burston in the 1930s. The 1921 invention by Emanuel Moor of a piano with a second keyboard sounding an octave higher, is a fascinating story, as is Burston's championing of the instrument. The Fantasia was composed in response to a request from pianist Alistair Noble for a concert-piece to mark Alan Jenkins' retirement from the Canberra School of Music in 1992. Jenkins and Sitsky were both pupils of Burston; Noble was not only a student of Alan Jenkins, but had also rescued the piano - believed to be the only example in Australia - from use in pianotuning practice. Like Sitskys other Fantasias, the work is conceived in a free-flowing, quasi improvisational style which exploits the particular features of the double-keyboard instrument. It is not possible to play the piece on a coventional piano." -- Peter Campbell
Open Access
Felix Werder: Sonata No 3 (1986)
(Canberra School of Music, Australian National University, 1986) Composer: Felix Werder; Schneider, Rotraud; Herscovitch, Daniel; Painter, John; Stines, Niven
"This work was completed in February, 1986, and, like much of Werders output from around this time, suggests the influence of Schoenbergs expressionist style. A further influence is perhaps the music of C.P.E. Bach: Werder has often expressed to me his intense admiration for that composer, and Bachs influence may be discerned in the way Werder fully exploits the technical and expressive resources of both instruments. Bachs influence is also apparent in the structure of the work: Werders use of the title, Sonata, does not imply the classical form of the eighteenth century, but rather a structure in which recurring thematic motives constantly jostle for attention, and in the process undergo continuous metamorphosis. Although the work is through-composed, an underlying four-movement structure can be discerned, in which each movement is interrupted by a recollection or anticipation of previous or subsequent movements." -- Daniel Hersovitch
Open Access
Gillian Whitehead: Okuru (1979)
(Canberra School of Music, Australian National University, 1979) Composer: Gillian Whitehead; Schneider, Rotraud; Herscovitch, Daniel; Painter, John; Stines, Niven
"Okuru is a Maori word meaning the fifth day of the new moon, and the work is one of a sequence of pieces that take their titles from that culture. The piece falls into four main sections, all based on various aspects of the same source material. In the first and third sections, various types of rhythmic figurations (elaborations of the basic ground plan) occur in both instruments in interlocking, rather than coinciding, segments. In the second section, the violin plays arabesques above a continual semiquaver rhythm, preceded, interrupted and concluded by variations of a chorale-like melody. The final section, which begins with the opening piano figurations of each of the previous sections, is essentially a 3:2 retrograde canon between piano and violin, the piano weaving its elaborate material around the continuing line of the violin. Okuru was written in 1979, and was first performed in Auckland by Mary O'Brien and Janetta McStay." -- Gillian Whitehead
Open Access
Graeme Gerrard: Passing The Bright Mirror (1992)
(Canberra School of Music, Australian National University, 1992) Composer: Graeme Gerrard; Grafton-Greene, Michael
"Fundamental to our experience of ourselves and our environment is the interplay between cyclic or repetitious activity and aperiodicity (which is sonically manifested as noise). With these we ascribe value - the desire for order and predictability, the tedium and tyranny of repetition, the relentless increase in entropy, the confusion of chaos, the hunger for spontaneity and variety, the delight in the discovery of pattern, and so on. Passing Bright Mirror combines these two poles of experience, the title reflecting the ambiguity of just who, or what, is doing the passing - the uncertainty, and exchange, of subject and object." -- Graeme Gerrard
Open Access
Jeff Pressing: His Master's Voice (1990-93)
(Canberra School of Music, Australian National University) Composer: Jeff Pressing; Grafton-Greene, Michael
"This work is for two solo performers: live voice, and vocal samples triggered and controlled by two MIDI keyboards. These samples are generated by an Akai sampler and signal-processed in realtime by a Max program written by Jim Sosnin and the composer. One keyboard selects the pitch of the samples to be played, and the other selects the processing type and parameters in the chosen processes. The vocal sounds focus on extended vocal techniques, ethnic borrowings, harmonic reinforcement, and phonetics of an imaginary composed language. The intention is to create a dialogue between live performer and samples, with the computer acting as a third agent. In formal terms, the piece is in three contiguous parts: the first is linear and abject; the second busy, variegated and whimsical; and the third is a codetta based on part one. This recording is of the live performance by the composer at the 1993 International Computer Music Conference in Tokyo, Japan." -- Jeff Pressing
Open Access
John Exton: Fantasy (1962)
(Canberra School of Music, Australian National University, 1962) Composer: John Exton; Schneider, Rotraud; Herscovitch, Daniel; Painter, John; Stines, Niven
"Composed in 1962, John Extons Fantasy is a twelve-tone work (though not a strict one) with a simple outline easily grasped and felt by the listener. Beginning with a poignant, slow soliloquy by the violin, the piano creeps in with a bare, soft, staccato line. Though momentum is built up with the addition of more notes and fast, spasmodic fragments, the mood remains tentative with many pauses and sudden endings in mid-flight. While the middle section is more legato, the final section returns to the mood of the opening: the violin, slow and deliberate during this time, is accompanied by soft, bell-like chords from the piano." -- Margaret Legge-Wilkinson
Open Access
Julian Yu: Scintillation III for Flute and Piano (1987)
(Canberra School of Music, Australian National University, 1987) Composer: Julian Yu; McSullea, Mardi; Harvey, Michael Kieran; Grafton-Greene, Michael
"Scintillation is a series of three pieces written in 1987. The first is for solo piano, the second for piano and metallic percussion, and this, the third, is for flute and piano, with the flute developing the melodic aspects of the work. The music is based on a mode characterised by perfect-fourth and minor-second intervals, which are responsible for the strong pentatonic flavour. The title refers to the brightness of the metallic instruments for which the piece was originally conceived, and also to the flowery nature of the music. The Chinese character for scintillation is made up of two parts, themselves meaning fire and joy (or music)." -- Julian Yu
Open Access
Keith Humble: Sonata for Flute and Piano (1990)
(Canberra School of Music, Australian National University, 1990) Composer: Keith Humble; McSullea, Mardi; Harvey, Michael Kieran; Grafton-Greene, Michael
"The Sonata, commissioned by 2MBS-FM in Sydney, is dedicated to the expatriate Australian flautist John Wion. Mardi McSullea gave the first performance of the Sonata at the Canberra School of Music in 1992. The Sonata displays a continuation of musical processes that I first exploited in my string quartet, Four All Seasons, and is in four movements, the third concluding with an extended cadenza. Companion compositions include my fourth Piano Sonata, the Sonata for Trombone and Piano and the Eight Bagatelles for Piano." -- Keith Humble
Open Access
Kimmo Vennonen: Mirage (1994)
(Canberra School of Music, Australian National University, 1994) Composer: Kimmo Vennonen; Grafton-Greene, Michael
"Mirage is an exploration of a technique I have developed that I call complex feedback. I used it on my 1989 CD with Jim Denley, Time of Non Duration, and Mirage is a further development. The technique involves linking digital and analog sound processors to a custom mixer with many patch leads - no synthesizers or sound generators are used. The result is a hybrid instrument with enormous timbral possibilities, having literally chaotic origins. The last time I assembled this instrument, I recorded two hours of interaction, mindful that nothing would sound the same again. Mirage was then composed from about ten minutes of the recording. These sounds have their own life, their own individual ways of moving and changing. Virtually no layering or further processing was used, so as to retain this original vitality." -- Kimmo Vennonen
Open Access
Mark Pollard: Under Simple Stars (1989)
(Canberra School of Music, Australian National University, 1989) Composer: Mark Pollard; McSullea, Mardi; Harvey, Michael Kieran; Grafton-Greene, Michael
"This work was commissioned by Mardi McSullea in 1989 with assistance from the Australia Council. The title was inspired by star-gazing, and for the composer seems to describe aptly the fascinating interaction of complexity and beauty that exists in natural phenomena. Under Simple Stars attempts to capture aspects of this interaction through an exploration of musical abstractions and the natural beauty of the alto flute. The opening evocative breath and bent sounds gradually move to definite notes, and then a melody. Performance enhancement is used through the addition of digital reverb to provide a constant sense of depth. Performer and technology interact to form a soundscape." -- Mark Pollard
Open Access
Michael Whiticker: Korokon (1983)
(Canberra School of Music, Australian National University, 1983) Composer: Michael Whiticker; Schneider, Rotraud; Herscovitch, Daniel; Painter, John; Stines, Niven
"Korokon is an Australian Aboriginal word meaning the roaring of the sea. There was no programmatic intention in the selection of this title; rather, it was the simple beauty of the word, and the vivid picture of a roaring sea that suggested its use. The work is based on the strict use of seven different chords and their transpositional possibilities, but this material rarely becomes obvious. Instead, it is the sense of contrast employed throughout Korokon that makes the strongest impression, and in this sense, the work makes reference to both sonata and variation forms. By looking at different aspects of the basic material and by emphasising their different capabilities, both instruments assume independent roles The piece is punctuated by climactic reference points, each climax followed by a calm after the storm Another important structural element of the piece is the continual use of extremes of register particularly in the piano part. Korokon is dedicated to Natalia Cohen, who commissioned it with the assistance of the Music Board of the Australia Council." -- Michael Whiticker
Open Access
Miriam Hyde: Andante Tranquillo' From Piano Conce
(Canberra School of Music, Australian National University, 1934) Composer: Miriam Hyde
Of the six movements of the two piano concertos, the 'Andante tranquillo' of the second concerto lends itself best to a piano transcription. The listener will doubtless form some idea of the orchestration that prevails; it may be sustained string tone, a few chords on the brass, or an echoing woodwind phrase. A feature of the solo part is a series of descending bell-like chords. Sir Malcolm Sargent, who conducted a performance by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra in 1938, remarked: 'This movement is a real romance'. The first performance took place in London in 1935, with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Constant Lambert. Both concertos have been recorded by the West Australian Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Geoffrey Simon.
Open Access
Miriam Hyde: Brownhill Creek In Spring
(Canberra School of Music, Australian National University, 1942) Composer: Miriam Hyde
Brownhill Creek in Spring was another war-time product, written in Adelaide in 1942; it was inspired by Esmond George's watercolour, Green Hills, which hangs near my Bluthner piano. That charming part of Adelaide was within walking distance of our home in Mitcham. It was hard to reconcile the peaceful surroundings, the gurgling of the creek and the occasional bird calls, with the holocaust that was taking place in Europe.
Open Access
Miriam Hyde: Drought-Stricken Grasses
(Canberra School of Music, Australian National University, 1964) Composer: Miriam Hyde
Drought-stricken Grasses conjures up an Australian ambience. It was prompted by a picture of Ayers Rock, with a foreground of parched grasses. Personified, they wait, watching deceptive grey clouds gathering, recalling the blessing of some previous sprinkle, and always longing for another revivifying shower, which eventually comes with exultation and sparkle. Little runnels trickle along the red earth and disappear. The grasses are resigned again to their arid environment.

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Browsing Series 2 (Discs 16 to 21) by Type "Sound recording"