Land dominates expansive concerto

It's not every government chief executive who manages to pursue a career as an artist. But Christopher Blake, CEO of the Department of Internal Affairs, does just that.

With a catalogue of compositions that includes an opera, a piano concerto and a symphony, the Wellington composer is in town for tomorrow's premiere of his Concerto Aoraki, played by violinist Natalia Lomeiko with the Auckland Philharmonia.

It has taken nine years for this concerto to reach the concert stage since Christ's College commissioned it to celebrate the school's 150th anniversary. Although Blake is not an old boy, the school itself was "part of my stamping ground", he says. "I grew up in the middle of Christchurch, Cranmer Square, which is only a few hundred metres away."

Concerto Aoraki is a monumental score by New Zealand standards, and Blake says he is drawn to writing on this scale. "We all have our own personalities and styles of working and I need a pretty big canvas to work things out. I am happiest when I can be expansive with a structure that can really explore the material. And when I look over the works I have written so far, it's the big ones that chart the course."

Although he was at ease with the pressures of "getting the basic building blocks together", initially Blake was more concerned about "writing for a violin soloist, and how the solo part would relate to the whole piece".

There was the whole matter of a cadenza.

"I had viewed a cadenza as mainly an opportunity for the soloist to show off, but then I realised it can shape the end of the movement, allowing the orchestra to have that short space afterwards to provide a satisfying ending."

Blake is particularly keen that the audience come away from his work with a feeling of satisfaction.

"You want a piece to speak to lots of different people, and I really concentrated on the singing qualities of the violin."

Talking through the piece, he is particularly pleased with its "spacious opening, building up a sense of expectation; the strings come in and catch the pitches given out by the solo violin, just like shooting stars".

He is happy with a palette that uses bells to illuminate movements that are concerned with voyages and remembrances.

And Christ's College alumni may well get something special from the way in which an old school song turns up in the second movement.

"Christ's College had given me a tape of the school song and some lusty lads belting out, which seemed to be a bit of a party piece," Blake says. "I couldn't do much with the school song, but I did manage some things with the second tune using the solo violin, which should be very moving for anyone who knows the original."

However, in the final count, Concerto Aoraki looks beyond the school gates to a larger picture - the land itself, as indicated by its title, the Maori name for Mt Cook.

Although Blake does try "not to be totally typecast as someone who illustrates New Zealand landscapes in music", our countryside is ever present.

"I grew up in Christchurch, and every mid-winter the family flies to Christchurch and then we drive down to the southern lakes, spend a week skiing, drive through the back of Geraldine, out through Fairlie out on to the Mackenzie country, with those beautiful wide open spaces.

"We always stop at Pukaki and look at the mountain. That whole image is in the work."

Auckland Philharmonia at Auckland Town Hall, 8pm March 16