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Complete Piano Music Vol.1 (Preview)

  • Text
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  • Lilburn
  • Lilburn
  • Promethean
Music by Douglas Lilburn | Piano

FOREWORD Douglas Lilburn

FOREWORD Douglas Lilburn occupies a pre-eminent position in New Zealand music, with a legacy extending well beyond his compositional output. As a composer, teacher and mentor he presided in innumerable ways over the artistic growth of New Zealand from 1940 onwards. From the early works redolent of the influence of Sibelius and Vaughan Williams, to the electro-acoustic pieces of his later years, his works have been instrumental in establishing a genuinely vernacular voice in New Zealand classical music. In 2005 Trust Records launched the first volume in the award-winning recording series showcasing all of Lilburn’s piano music receiving ‘Best Classical Album’ in the 2005 Recording Industry of New Zealand Music Awards and in the same year, Gramophone acclaimed that ‘[These] performances and recordings are unobtrusively excellent.’ This edition is the first of eight companion volumes to accompany the recorded series and draws on the expertise of Dr. Robert Hoskins of Massey University and Rod Biss, formerly of Schott London, Faber Music and Price Milburn Music, who was instrumental in first publishing Lilburn’s piano music in the 1970s. Having worked with Lilburn directly on these early publications, Biss has now revisited original source materials in the preparation for this series. Together, the editors have carefully considered and clarified Lilburn’s manuscripts and early publications in preparing these volumes as both scholarly and practical editions for performance, and presented with the exacting and elegant house style of Promethean Editions. This collection does not generally include juvenilia, trivia, incomplete or rejected pieces/ movements. Exceptions are specified in the notes. Biography Douglas Lilburn (1915–2001) grew up on ‘Drysdale’, a hill-country farm bordering the mountainous region at the centre of New Zealand’s North Island. He often described his boyhood home as ‘paradise’ and his first major orchestral work, Drysdale Overture (1937), written while a student under the aegis of Ralph Vaughan Williams at the Royal College of Music in London, conjures up the hills, bush and stream as primal sites of imaginative wonder. Recalling the impression of Drysdale Overture, Lilburn wrote: ‘I’m left with that lovely Mark Twain image of Jim and Huckleberry drifting their barge down that great river, looking up at the stars and wondering “whether they was made, or only just happened.’” Other works inspired by his nostalgia were two student piano sonatas, a cantata entitled Prodigal Country (1939), and the Aotearoa Overture (1940), which has become a New Zealand classic. Returning to Christchurch, Lilburn banded together with an innovative group of painters, poets and publishers who were to prove influential. Settings of Allen Curnow and Denis Glover, for instance, resulted in two iconic works: Landfall in Unknown Seas (1942), a voyage of spiritual discovery for narrator and string orchestra, and the song cycle Sings Harry (1953), the musings of a middle-aged bachelor who, returning to the mountains where he grew up, begins to reassess and evaluate the course his life has taken. Two more works, an orchestral tone poem A Song of Islands (1946) and the Chaconne for piano (1946), find their parallel in the regional paintings of Rita Angus. PEL01 – ii

In 1947 Lilburn joined the staff of Victoria University College in Wellington and completed several works that received high critical acclaim, including two symphonies, two piano sonatas, and the Alistair Campbell song cycle Elegy (1951) – a vision of the titanic indifference of nature. Lilburn composed the Symphony No.3 (1961), along with Sonatina No.2 (1962) and Nine Short Pieces for Piano (1965–66), in response to a stimulating period of sabbatical leave. Masterpieces of concentrated form, these works explore the boundaries of his instrumental writing. From this point until his retirement, Lilburn chose to take on the new territory of electroacoustic composition. Lilburn’s final years were spent quietly at home in Thorndon, Wellington tending his garden and, until the onset of arthritis, playing his beloved August Förster piano. He received the Order of New Zealand in 1988. Sonata (1949) Allegro Poco adagio Allegro assai, vivace The bracing lyric power of this sonata is established in the hill-shaped contour of the opening octave statement and the shadowy recesses of the chordal reply. The counterweight thus provided by chords rebounding from the octaves, creates a resonance or ‘oversound’, which flows through the first movement, and indeed the entire work. This bold gestural opening, almost constituting a counter-narrative to the opening paragraphs of Schubert’s Piano Sonata in A minor, D.784, instinctively identifies with the forces of nature and affirms an enduring passion for life. The central movement, intensely lyrical rather than starkly dramatic, seems to plough the earth. The musical core is a lullaby-like theme which wells up out of heart-break. Cut this music and it will bleed. Yet consolation can be found in the sweet whisper of the closing bars. If the physical push of the second movement is earthward then the psychical direction of the finale is skyward; its melodies overbrim without complication to bring the sonata into abundant fruition. The composer’s friend and colleague Frederick Page gave the first performance but Margaret Nielsen, whose pianism helped to shape Lilburn’s voice, established it in the repertory. ‘Occasional Pieces for Piano’ (1942-73) This collection of sketches, studies and personal tributes was assembled for publication in 1975. Written mainly for amateurs, these pieces apprehend the fold of landscape as well as being rooted in friendship. Poco lento (1956), for instance, flows tidally, while in Still Music, 1973 (dedicated to Christchurch doctor William Norris Rogers) and Three Bars for MN, 1968 (Margaret Nielsen), Lilburn speaks in a soft, personal tone. The first two groups of pieces – Four Preludes (1942–44) and Two Christmas Preludes for L.B. (1949), were written for Leo Bensemann, an artist, amateur pianist, and Denis Glover’s partner at Caxton Press (Four Preludes was first published by Caxton Press). Shifting transitions from light into shadow in the third prelude suggest that Lilburn is contemplating one of PEL01 – iii

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