Tocker verse enriches brave new work

Ross Harris. Photo / Supplied

Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra's Brave New World concert next Thursday has nothing to do with English writer Aldous Huxley.

But brave it certainly is to programme two substantial recent scores - Australian Brett Dean's The Lost Art of Letter Writing and a new fourth symphony from Wellington composer Ross Harris.

It was Dean's work that led Harris to preface each section of his symphony with a fragment of poetry from the late Mahinarangi Tocker.

"Lost Art is a lamentation for the fact people don't write letters any more," Harris explains. "Mine is the counter to that. I found that Mahina had written me about 400 emails over two years and, within them, were little poems and fragments of poems."

Tocker, a key voice in contemporary Maori music who died unexpectedly in 2008, had close associations with Harris as friend and colleague.

While the composer dismisses his trumpet playing on her 2005 The Mongrel in Me album as that of "a muso who was just hanging around", the pair were investigating "working more closely together and that was shaping up to be quite exciting".

In the new symphony, Tocker's words relate to the music that follows them. The work's first section, headed "The sea mimics/a thousand applauding kanuka" features snare-drums across the stage to create "a tumbling impression of sea movement on a beach running across the orchestra," says Harris. "But I think it's a really good abstract piece too.

"If people don't have the programme they shouldn't feel nervous. It's symphonic in my normal way."

The second section presents a dancing Mahinarangi. Constantly changing time signatures make it "fall from one tempo into another, almost like plunging to another level", Harris says. "I really like the feel of that."

The third section has its mood set by Tocker's "The window fogs/To track my finger/Smudge my eyes in mist/In questions asked of beauty". APO audiences had a preview of this slow movement when the orchestra launched its 2011 season last year.

"At the beginning of the movement there's the same chord progression Mahina uses in her song Spinning but it's really slowed down.

"This is one of my favourites of all her chord sequences and, after the mad dancing of the second movement, it brings such calmness."

Moving from the fourth section ("where things are whizzing around the orchestra against slow chords in the strings and brass") to the fifth and final, we find the ultimate bonding of symphonist and songwriter.

"I end with a quote, 'I will not walk these streets of ages into forever alone' from her song Forever," Harris explains. "It's a bit of an anthem that song, a beautiful one and, against it, is one of my chords."

Performance

What: Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra

Where and when: Auckland Town Hall, Thursday at 8pm