So you are not up on the music of New Zealand? Well, you needn't hang your head. Here's a chance not only to set things to rights, but also to be the first to be able to talk about it at the Saucon Valley Country Club's happy-hour.
I am speaking, of course, of composed music, in the western tradition, not of the native music of the Maoris, at which we are going to have a look in a month or so. New Zealanders have barely had time to get established, much less indulge themselves in symphonies and operas on a grand scale. True, Captain Cook claimed New Zealand for Britannia over two centuries ago, but, quite untrue to form, the lady rejected the claim, and it wasn't until the middle of the last century that it officially became a Dominion of the British Empire. There followed hard on that event the Maori Wars, and the gold and sheep-farming rushes (the latter memorialized in Samuel Butler's Erewhon), none of them quite the sort of thing to give a big impetus to culture with a capital "C". It should be quite enough that New Zealand has produced singers of the calibre of Kiri TeKanawa and Inia TeWiata. But to have a national radio orchestra? However, perhaps that's a sign of backwardness. Perhaps, like ourselves, the New Zealanders will soon advance and give the airwaves over to the people and let them have their rock, their roll, their commercials, and their gabble.
Under the circumstances, it should come as no surprise that composers Douglas Lilburn and David Farquhar, were trained in England, though Farquhar, the younger man, began at Victoria University in Wellington, where both teach. Lilburn, regarded as his country's leading composer, was a pupil of Vaughan Williams, though in recent years he has gone electronic. Farquhar has written, among other things, an opera with the intriguing title
'' A Unicorn for Christmas.”
For once I can say that I have heard these performances, by Kiwi out of Oryx. (No monstrosities will be turned loose on the world; these are record companies in New Zealand and England, respectively.) Neither composer presents a particularly individual profile, but the music is neither dull nor repellent. I can't imagine anyone's not liking Lilburn's "Aotearoa Overture," with its lovely opening for high flutes. When he got around to his third symphony in 1961, twenty-one years later, he had obviously been listening to Stravinsky. The influence (if I'm right) is heard in the jagged, perky, instrumental lines, which are given much of the time to the winds, and to the strongly rhythmic impulse. The piece is often witty--I recall a sudden oracular pronouncement by the tuba which is thereupon "interpreted" by the solo 'cello.
Whereas Lilburn's symphony is in one movement, Farquhar's is in three. The structure is formal, the language "modern." Either symphony would, I suspect, have won the approval of dear old Ralph van Arnam, who, the last time we chatted, still had not accepted Debussy or Ravel.) Farquhar tells us that his first movement is in sonata form, though it seems to me to ramble a bit; but the scherzo is pleasant, and the concluding passacaglia is really quite impressive.
John Hopkins was the regular conductor of the NZBC Symphony for six seasons before he went to Australia to become Music Director for that country's broadcasting network. He has succeeded by Italian-born Juan Matteucci, erstwhile conductor of the Chilean Philharmonic. (Note: The liner blurb tells you that the Farquhar symphony is "led" by Eric Lawson; in British tradition this means he acted as concert-master, or first-desk violin, not as conductor.)
