On track: World of music from Dunedin

Anthony Ritchie

Dunedin's Anthony Ritchie is one of our most industrious composers. Only in his mid-40s, his works run to Opus 111 and many are substantial (his most recent being The God Boy, an opera based on Ian Cross' 1957 novel).

Opus 101 is a set of 24 preludes, written in 2002 and now available on a new Atoll CD played by Sharon Joy Vogan.

There is a world of music in these 50 minutes and the precedents of Bach, Chopin, Shostakovich and Debussy are freely admitted. Ritchie's fluent, eclectic style allows for some frank tributes - no 13 is a mysterious sojourn in Claudeland while no 17 pays homage to Bach with a lean and lithe 12-note "prelugue" (Ritchie's neologism for a combination of prelude and fugue).

Though Ritchie's music can have problems sustaining a consistency of tone, there are no such worries here. The outcome of a period of experimentation, the preludes give a sense of stock-taking stylistically.

The CD booklet enumerates the various procedures used in the composition process, but methodologies never intrude on the music.

The craft is consummate, from the suspended sonorities of no 1 (complete with plucked strings) to the devil-may-care swing of no 23, in which birdsong ushers in a canter with a familiar nursery rhyme.

Gershwin aficionados will nod approval at the subtle hint of the American composer's second prelude which sets off the final number. Throughout, I am reminded of the territory briefly surveyed by Lilburn in his testy Nine Short Pieces.

Although the CD cover is one of the dullest I've seen since the murkier moments of Melodiya, the Atoll recording, made in Auckland's University Music Theatre, is tip-top. Producer Wayne Laird has created the perfect ambience and seems to extract a multitude of voices from the university's Steinway, from bellbird-clear treble to singing bass lines.

It is also nice to hear Sharon Joy Vogan again, a pianist whose association with Ritchie goes back to his 1982 Concertino. I have long been an admirer of Vogan's tonal and technical precision, and her ability to catch the sweep of a piece. At last we have it on CD, in a composition worthy of her artistry.

* Anthony Ritchie, Piano Preludes (Atoll ACD 504)