NZSO's Made in New Zealand concert well worth radio repeat

By WILLIAM DART

When it comes to music of the concert hall variety, Wellington is one lucky burg, and those capital folk know it. With the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra ensconced in the Town Hall complex, a fully fledged (if increasingly dull) International Festival hitting town every two years, as well as organisations such as Chamber Music New Zealand, Concert FM, the New Zealand String Quartet and Creative NZ being Wellington-based, this is a city of musical privilege.

The NZSO gets the most headlines north of Johnsonville, especially with its new status as an "autonomous non-company Crown entity".

The journey was not unruffled and composers, in particular, were understandably concerned there would be a special place for New Zealand music in the orchestra's plans.

Although the orchestra has historic connections with composers, there have also been lean years when the homegrown has been all but forgotten.

Things have improved. Spurred on, no doubt, by the example of the Auckland Philharmonia, the NZSO, in collaboration with the Centre for New Zealand Music, has instigated Composer Reading sessions, as well as a special Wellington-only Made in New Zealand concert.

Last year, the first of these concerts was broadcast live to taxpayers round the country, thanks to Concert FM. Alas, it turned out to be a bit of a boys' club and a local one at that, with all the composers male and only one from out of town.

The second instalment, last Friday, took the same line. The all-male quartet of composers - Douglas Lilburn, Jack Body, Michael Norris and Lyell Cresswell - each had strong staff or student affiliations to Victoria University.

At the event, with a relatively modest audience braving what must be the most uncomfortable town hall seats in the country, the musical rewards were reassuringly solid, as one would expect under the baton of Kenneth Young.

Chief of these was hearing Michael Norris' First Symphony, commissioned and premiered by the Southern Sinfonia back in 2002. This is a finely crafted piece, fashioned with regional abilities and sympathies in mind, without a jot of compromise.

Bartok and Shostakovich meet Lutoslawski and Lilburn in a work that catches all the poetry of its title, the mountains ponder a silence as profound as the stars.

Lilburn was represented by his curious 1956 Birthday Offering, while Jack Body's 1985 Poems of Solitary Delights, with Paul Chappory reciting the Japanese verses, took a nostalgic trip back to the autumnal days of the Cambridge Music School.

The most recent work, Lyell Cresswell's Of Smoke and Bickering Flame, turned out to be a virtuoso roller-coaster ride, delivered with the precision of a crack contemporary ensemble.

Even with those seats, I could have sat through the programme again right there and then and will make every effort to catch Concert FM's broadcast on May 24, during the network's celebration of New Zealand Music Week.

It was Michael Norris who turned out to be the young man of the evening when he won all three categories of the Douglas Lilburn Prize. Audience, orchestra and the judges gave his Rays of the Sun, Shards of the Moon a clean sweep.

An opportunity had been missed. Trying to remember last June when we heard the first of the four entries, I couldn't help but think how nice it would have been if Norris' winning piece had been included on this shortish programme.

Norris is one of the sharper talents around, better known for the jagged scores he writes for stroma and 175 East than for the comparatively extravagant canvases of Rays of the Sun.

He admits the prize is "an indication that I'm going along the right lines" and confesses to self-doubt. "Every composer is and it's not necessarily a bad thing. We are forced to reflect on our own practice."

Norris seems guarded when I ask him where an audience fits into his agenda. He is "interested in an audience that's interested in the music I want to write for myself. If it's a small community, so be it, so long as that doesn't stop me being able to do what I'm able to do".

For a composer who is equally adept in the electronic studio, with two breathtaking pieces available on the New Zealand Sonic Art CDs, the good old-fashioned orchestra still exerts an irresistible lure.

"There is something one can achieve with a symphony orchestra that one can't achieve with electronic music," he says. "The theatricality of seeing extremely well played professional playing is one thing, and there's something mysterious and seductive about that full orchestral sound.

"The range of expression available with a symphony orchestra is virtually limitless, even though it's quite restrictive. There's always somebody doing something inventive with it."