Worth wait for Lilburn

By WILLIAM DART

It is difficult to imagine a more eagerly awaited event than the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra's new recording of Douglas Lilburn's three symphonies.

This is the orchestra's third CD of these important works. The first was Kiwi Pacific's 1993 collection, taken from earlier LP recordings, conducted by John Hopkins and Ashley Heenan; followed a year later by a Continuum new recording of the works, under Hopkins.

Lilburn was a pioneering force in this country's music, and nowhere more so than in these scores, which chart his career from rough-hewn Sibelian grandeur through more contoured Otago landscapes to a craggy, sometimes anxious, Modernism.

A deep concern for the landscape informed Lilburn's music and his personal philosophy - when you look at Rita Angus' 1945 watercolour of the composer on the Naxos album booklet, inevitably your eyes push past this slightly awkward, bespectacled man to the sea and sky beyond.

The spirit of Lilburn might be felt hovering over this new CD, as James Judd and the orchestra recorded these works last May, a few days before the composer died. During its following tour the NZSO offered a poignant tribute to the man by including the slow movement of the Second Symphony on its programmes.

That was a preview, in a sense, of this new recording, which has the conductor giving the works a new gravitas, something apparent from the spacious launching of the First Symphony - although it's not painted so grandly that the insouciant clarinet theme loses its lilt.

Many players have lived with these works for decades, and you can hear this in their confidence and virtuosity. To experience the unbridled bravura, eavesdrop on the brilliant repartee of the Second Symphony's Scherzo.

The sound throughout is full-bodied without sacrificing detail. Those fiery trumpet fanfares a few minutes into the Third Symphony shoot out of the speakers like flashes of lightning and the woodwind captivates as it sparkles. Judd manages to inject this often sombre score with the eternal spirit of the dance.

It may not be a joyous dance, but within it lie the heart and soul of one of our greatest artists.

At $34 this fine recording would be a bargain; at $14.99 every home should have one.

* Douglas Lilburn, The Three Symphonies (Naxos 8.555862).