Michael Houstoun brings NZ composer Lyell Cresswell's new piano concerto to life.
Michael Houstoun brings NZ composer Lyell Cresswell's new piano concerto to life.
New Zealand composer Lyell Cresswell's new piano concerto gets its premiere performance on Thursday courtesy of the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra and Michael Houstoun.
It is Cresswell's first major work to be performed here since he received a 2016 Arts Foundation Laureate Award. Accepting the award, he said all he'd been doing during the years was using music to write his own biography.
"If I had used words instead of music I would simply have told a pack of lies but I find it impossible to tell lies when I'm writing music," he said.
"I tell my story and give my view of the world in terms of feelings and emotions."
Based in Scotland since 1972, Creswell's dual cultural citizenship has made two countries proud of him. He once jested that moving from the edge of the world in New Zealand to the edge of Europe in Aberdeen was a fairly easy transition, and the meld of the rough-hewn, mystical and wryly humorous in his compositions relates well to both cultures.
His music is well-represented locally on the Naxos label and in the imminent Rattle release, The Art of Black and White, featuring soprano Jennifer Maybee, tenor Christopher Bowen and pianist Stephen De Pledge.
At 73, Cresswell keeps his ear to the ground but admits the amount of new music that's around can be overwhelming. However, his upcoming piano concerto explores new territory for him as well as looking back a few centuries.
Its title, Ach wie fluchtig, ach wie nichtig (Ah how fleeting, ah how subtle) comes from one of the six German chorale tunes, famously harmonised by Bach, that inspired the piece.
"My original idea was to write an orchestral score around these but when Michael Houstoun played at the Edinburgh Festival in 2014, he asked me for a piano concerto and the chorales came to mind."
For Cresswell, Bach is synonymous with his own student days in Wellington where he sang Bach in a choir and was trained to write in the composer's style. He sees his finished concerto as a set of variations on six specific tunes, brought together in a brilliant finale, with Houstoun playing one phrase that could almost have been harmonised by Bach himself.
The use of traditional harmony and tonality is very much a gesture towards listeners, offering them a way to chart the unfamiliar.
"I'd like the audience to have something to hang on to as they move through this piece," said Creswell, explaining that back in Bach's day - the 17th and 18th centuries - these sturdy and familiar tunes would have provided familiar landmarks in church, placed at crucial points in the musical service.
While congregational singing is not part of Thursday's performance, Cresswell, in a pre-concert talk with Eve de Castro-Robinson, may well unveil some of the inspirational chorales.
Lowdown What: Prokofiev 5, Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra Where & when: Auckland Town Hall, Thursday
