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TASMANIAN SYMPHONY Perhaps no other has consciously II. The Mexican sun is a thematic concept in the attempted to make Australian orchestral music Sun Music series. so truly Australian as Peter Sculthorpe, who first Sculthorpe has lived in Sydney since being came to public attention with the String Quartet offered a lectureship at the University of Sydney No. 6, commissioned by Australia in in 1963 (at the time of his retirement a few 1964. Sculthorpe cemented his reputation with years ago, he held a personal chair as Professor the Sun Music series for orchestra, which could be said to have been inspired by a pictorial view in Musical Composition). He was born in Peter Sculthorpe b. 1929 of Australia as a sun-baked landscape. In all there Launceston, Tasmania, and has resided in the were four Sun Musics, and in 1968 even a ballet UK and US, with visiting professorships at the 1 Dreaming 18’07 based on the same music. Irkanda IV, an earlier University of Sussex and Yale. However, he has Sue-Ellen Paulsen cello work (1961), signalled an interest in Aboriginal said that Northern Australia is the landscape that he has come to love most on earth, a love Quamby [21’20] culture, though at this stage it was reflected expressed in pieces he has written since the 2 Prelude 3’15 purely in titles. Irkanda suggested a sense of 1980s, such as Kakadu (1988) and Jabiru 3 In the Valley 5’23 loneliness and desolation, even of an insignificant Dreaming (1990-94). 4 From High Hills 4’59 figure dwarfed by the overwhelming landscape. 5 At Quamby Bluff 7’43 Sculthorpe, like his distinguished Australian Melodies from Arnhem Land and Groote Eylandt have been used in Sculthorpe’s works, notably 6 predecessor Percy Grainger, looked beyond Nourlangie 21’19 Djilile (Whistling Duck on a Billabong) which was European models for his music. The whole of Karin Schaupp guitar used to complement a theme and set of the Pacific Rim was his musical hinterland at a variations expressive of alienated European 7 Music for Bali 3’56 time when the post-serialism of the Darmstadt culture in Port Essington (1977). Indeed, School held sway in Europe. In 1968, the abbot Sculthorpe is apt to use similar material (having Total Playing Time 64’46 of a monastery in Japan introduced Sculthorpe representational significance) across a number to saibara music, the influence of which of works, contributing to his highly recognisable Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra surfaced in the 1979 orchestral work Mangrove, style. Other fingerprints include Penderecki-like Richard Mills conductor a work which describes in the New string clusters, string harmonic glissandi Groves Dictionary of Music and Musicians as imitating bird cries, and melodies (be they celebrating ‘the rich fecundity of mangrove tidal derived from saibara tunes, Aboriginal strains or flats at a time when these trees were looked on Gregorian plainchant) in high relief, all contained as untidy impediments to clean-limbed tourist within highly audible contrasting forms. development’. Balinese gamelan had been Sculthorpe has credited his characteristic quoted in parts of Sun Music III and Sun Music interval of a falling semitone, evident also in

2 3 Aboriginal chant, to the ‘Abschied’ (Farewell) always been of great significance to Sculthorpe. because of my concern about the possibility of last movement, At Quamby Bluff, is the longest, from Mahler’s Song of the Earth. There is Steven Isserlis, who gave the world premiere of an end to paradise. These feelings, however, are and the music here is questioning and restless. certainly an elegiac tone to much of his music, Cello Dreaming in 1998, struck by the erased at the close of the work. Following a short hymn-like section, however, even a tone of Mahlerian regret in Memento composer’s use of the notation piuttosto lontano there is some resolution at the close. mori (1993), a warning of death for the planet (‘somewhat distant’), stopped mid-rehearsal and Quamby was originally Sculthorpe’s String inspired by environmental despoliation of Easter exclaimed, ‘I’ve just realised that you and Quartet No. 14; the version for chamber orchestra After I completed Quamby, I realised that the Island in the southern Pacific. Sculthorpe’s Beethoven are the only ever to use was created in 2000. Interviewed by Robin outer movements contain suggestions of discovery that the astronomer Kepler regarded the word piuttosto!’ Sculthorpe’s delight in Hughes for the Australian Biography Project in Beethoven’s motto theme, ‘Muss es sein?’, the oscillation of the semitone A flat-G as the recounting this event is almost palpable. 1998, soon after the composition of the quartet ‘Must it be?’ I was unaware of this while writing sound of planet Earth has provided him with a Similarly, he was profoundly moved to realise version, Sculthorpe described the piece as ‘the the work, but clearly such a question was on my musical signifier of ecological concerns which that the Stradivarius on which Isserlis performed string quartet that I would have written in mind at the time. Tasmania as a Tasmanian before I was really have been an increasing theme in his work. the work had once been the property of the Tasmanian roots notwithstanding, Sculthorpe exposed to Asian music and Aboriginal music … legendary cellist Emanuel Feuermann, who had has found a spiritual home in northern Australia’s Sculthorpe has written numerous orchestral In other words, a Tasmanian string quartet.’ bequeathed it to his good friend Aldo Parisot – Kakadu region. It comes as a surprise to many works and 15 string quartets, but few stage who, more than thirty years earlier, had When I was very young, my father told me a to learn that when Sculthorpe wrote the piece works apart from the aforementioned ballet performed many of Sculthorpe’s early pieces on story about Quamby Bluff, a rather forbidding Kakadu, he had never actually been to the place: created from his work, and the TV Quiros. that same instrument. The ‘ritual’ Rites of Passage (1976) made use of mountainous outcrop in the highlands of the work was commissioned by an American the Kepler notes, and also of a combination of Cello Dreaming draws its inspiration from northern Tasmania. There, according to legend, anaesthesiologist as a 60th birthday present for Latin and Central Australian Arrernte texts. It Australia’s so-called Top End. There, along the colonial government soldiers once drove a tribe his wife. ‘When I finally visited Kakadu,’ could be said that recent works signal a re- coastline, Aboriginal cultures mingle with those of Aborigines to the bluff’s edge. The Aborigines Sculthorpe later wrote, ‘it wasn’t at all as I’d engagement with European traditions. The 2001 of the Torres Strait, Papua New Guinea and, had the choice of being shot, or jumping. They imagined it. I’d seen a number of photographs, orchestral work New Norcia was inspired by the to a slightly lesser extent, Indonesia. Cello chose the latter, and as they jumped they cried but none conveyed the spirit of its landscape. musical traditions established at that West Dreaming reflects this. out, ‘Quamby! Quamby!’ meaning ‘Save me! Also, it was much more serene than I’d Australian monastery by Dom Rosendo Salvado, Save me!’ It was perhaps inevitable that my imagined. I felt that I really belonged there, a and is based on the plainchant Psalmus 150. The music is based upon two ideas, both first thoughts about this incident and this place strange feeling, perhaps, for a Tasmanian.’ The Plainchant is also used extensively in his most stated by the soloist. Heard at the outset, the would find their way into a piece of music. guitar concerto Nourlangie (1989) is one of recent work, Requiem (2004). first idea is an adaptation of an Indigenous several works inspired by the ancient beauty of lullaby. The second idea, dominating the central The Prelude presents most of the material upon the region. In this work, says guitarist John Beethoven Variations, premiered by the West section, is a downward-falling motif, of the kind which the music is based. Throughout, the Williams, the work’s dedicatee, Sculthorpe Australian Symphony Orchestra in December known as a ‘tumbling strain’. In the course of falling tritone is especially important. Heard at ‘takes advantage of the guitar’s more universal 2003, is based on the ‘Ode to Joy’ of the work, references are also made to birdsong, the very outset, it dominates the sombre sound qualities – the time and space between Beethoven, a composer for whom Sculthorpe to the drone of the didjeridu and to the second movement, In the Valley. By way of its plucked notes, and the resonances within the had previously shown little sympathy. figurations of the Balinese gamelan. If there are contrast, From High Hills is calmly lyrical, its instrument – in contrast to the more European, Nevertheless, the resonances of history have feelings of regret in some of the music, this is melody actually conceived in my schooldays. The notably Spanish, tradition of developing

4 5 idiomatic note patterns with less focus on the second of my pieces to be influenced by the Sue-Ellen Paulsen concerto The Great Memory, which was inner beauty of the sound itself.’ sun-laden music of tropical Bali,’ says Sculthorpe. composed especially for her. She has also Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra’s Principal Cello From Tabuh Tabuhan, for strings and percussion, featured as soloist with the Tasmanian In 1989 I made my first visit to Kakadu National Sue-Ellen Paulsen studied in Vienna with André was commissioned by the then Australian Symphony Orchestra in CD recordings of Park, in the north of Australia. Looking out Navarra after completing her studies at the Broadcasting Commission in honour of the 86th compositions by Peter Sculthorpe and the Cello across the great floodplains there, I could see Queensland Conservatorium with Richard birthday of Igor Stravinsky, and was given its Concertos of Richard Mills and . abandoned sites of early white settlement, the Dedecius. She toured the United Kingdom, premiere performance in a recording by the With support from the Australia Council, she has Arafura Sea and, in my imagination, Torres Strait Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra in 1968. ‘Tabuh’ Germany and Italy as soloist with the commissioned works from Gordon Kerry and and even the islands of Indonesia. The music of is the Balinese word for hammer, or stroke; it is Queensland Youth Orchestra in 1980 and in the Antony Partos. these places, and of Kakadu itself, fused in my also the word for music. ‘I’ve always liked the same year was a Commonwealth Winner in the mind. Since that time I have written a number of idea that music in Bali isn’t concerned with ABC Concerto Competition (now Symphony Sue-Ellen Paulsen has appeared in recital with works in which this fusion has been abstractions. It’s concerned with the physical act Australia Young Performers Awards). She was pianist Caroline Almonte (broadcast live on ABC incorporated into my musical language. of making sound, with making music …’ cellist with the New England String Quartet in Classic FM) and performed Saint-Saëns’ La Nourlangie is one of these works. It takes its Armidale for three years prior to her Muse et le poète with Irish violinist Fionnuala name from an enormous monolith in the park. Music for Bali was written in 1968. Originally, it appointment with the TSO. Sue-Ellen Paulsen was called From Tabuh Tabuhan and it belongs to Hunt and the TSO. Other recent performances was one of two Australians invited to play in the Nourlangie consists of alternations and a period in my output that was very much with the TSO include Schumann’s Cello World Philharmonic Orchestra in Montreal, elaborations of two different motifs. Following influenced by Indonesian music. Following the Concerto, and Tchaikovsky’s Variations on a an introduction, the first motif is heard in a terrorist act in Bali, in October 2002, I decided to Canada in 1988. Rococo Theme. chorale-like form. The second motif, heard change the title to Music for Bali. I wanted the Sue-Ellen Paulsen has been Guest Principal with immediately after the first, is based upon a music to sing for those who were maimed or Karin Schaupp the Sydney Symphony, Adelaide Symphony Torres Strait dance-song, and is later killed in the bombing. Orchestra and Australian Chamber Orchestra. transformed into a long, joyful melody. Although Karin Schaupp is one of the most outstanding She was invited to join the Australian Chamber the work contains many bird sounds, it is not A brief work, its outer sections were inspired by young guitarists on the international scene. She Orchestra for its 1995 American and 1996 intended to be a description of Nourlangie; more Balinese gamelan music. The central section was performs widely on the international stage, as a properly it concerns my feelings about this inspired by music used in arja, the popular theatre European tours and in April and May of 1997 recitalist, concerto soloist and festival guest. Her powerful and serene place. of Bali. My intention was to suggest the tenderness she travelled throughout the Czech Republic playing receives the highest acclaim from critics and spaciousness of an arja song of love. giving recitals in chateaux and castles in and audiences alike and she is held in great Music for Bali is another work with a somewhat Bohemia and Moravia. esteem by her peers worldwide. She has given surprising genesis: the winter cold of an artists’ Gordon Kalton Williams (Symphony Australia) countless recitals in Australia, Europe, Asia, the colony in upper New York. (Sculthorpe did not Natalie Shea Sue-Ellen makes regular solo appearances with visit Bali until 1973, when he was working on an Peter Sculthorpe the TSO, performing concertos by Haydn, US, Mexico and Canada. Karin Schaupp’s unique ABC documentary about Balinese music.) It is Milhaud, Lalo, Shostakovich, Ligeti and Sallinen, stage presence and magical, passionate playing taken from a larger work, the 24-minute Tabuh among others. In 1995 she gave the world have inspired several composers to write works Tabuhan for wind quintet and percussion: ‘the premiere performance of Andrew Ford’s cello especially for her.

6 7 Karin Schaupp has appeared on live television in Music Council of Australia Freedman Fellowship Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra many parts of the world. In 1997 she performed in recognition of her achievements. The Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra is acclaimed as one of the world’s finest small . live as a Special Guest Artist to 20 million Karin Schaupp has previously released three German-born Sebastian Lang-Lessing is the orchestra’s Chief Conductor and Artistic Director. viewers and listeners in China, on the occasion highly acclaimed solo CDs: Soliloquy (1997), of China Radio International’s 50th Anniversary The TSO presents an exciting and diverse annual concert series in Hobart and Launceston as Leyenda (1998) and Evocation (2000). Recently, celebrations. More recently, Karin Schaupp was well as concerts in regional centres. With a full-time playing strength of 47 musicians, its core she has extended her performing activities to invited to join a prestigious line-up of repertoire is that of the Classical and early Romantic periods. It is, however, a versatile orchestra, become a founding member of two new guitar international artists in the opening Gala of the performing repertoire from Baroque to jazz, popular music, opera and ballet, and is recognised for ensembles, The World Guitar Trio based in the Goodwill Games, which was broadcast on live championing contemporary music. USA (with Chris McGuire and Carlos Barbosa- international television. She has also appeared Lima) and Saffire: The Australian Guitar Quartet on German, American and Canadian television The TSO records regularly for radio broadcasts, compact discs and soundtracks for television and film. (with , and Antony and some of her Australian TV appearances have It was the first Australian orchestra to record the complete Beethoven symphonies, and its recent Field). Saffire’s recent debut CD for ABC Classics resulted in an overwhelming response from recordings on international and Australian labels have been received with critical acclaim. In 2003, the reached No. 1 on the classical charts and won viewers, with record numbers of viewers orchestra launched its Australian Music Program and in 2004 released the first recordings of orchestral the 2003 ARIA award for Best Classical Album. calling in. Karin Schaupp also plays regularly music as part of the TSO Australian Composer Series. on radio, including numerous broadcasts of Karin Schaupp has also been involved in a Encouragement of young talent is of paramount importance to the TSO. It provides an education live recitals, as well as many interviews and number of other collaborative CD projects program and collaborates extensively on a range of programs with Symphony Australia, the Australian guest appearances. including concertos by Philip Bracanin, Ross Youth Orchestra and the Australian Music Centre. Edwards and Peter Sculthorpe for ABC Classics. Karin Schaupp’s guitar training began at the age The TSO has performed in most of the major Australian festivals and regularly travels to mainland of five and she first performed in public the Australia, touring both capital cities and regional centres. It has performed in Greece, Israel, Indonesia, following year. While still in her teens she won South Korea, China, Argentina, Canada and the USA. prizes at international competitions in Lagonegro (Italy) and Madrid, where she was also awarded the special competition prize for the Best Interpretation of Spanish Music.

Taught almost exclusively by her guitarist mother

Isolde Schaupp, Karin Schaupp completed her Sponsor of the TSO Australian Music Program tertiary music studies at the University of Queensland with First Class Honours, a Powering Australian music into the future Master’s degree and a University Gold Medal. Most recently she was awarded the prestigious

8 9 Richard Mills received a number of Green Room and Executive Producers Robert Patterson, Lyle Chan Helpmann Awards including Best Opera at both Recording Producer Brooke Green Richard Mills is one of Australia’s most sought ceremonies and Best New Australian Work. Recording Engineer Andrew Dixon after conductors. In recent years he has pursued He has been commissioned to write a new Recordings Manager Virginia Read a diverse career as a conductor and composer opera for the 2007 UWA Perth International Editorial and Production Manager Hilary Shrubb which has seen him working with a large Arts Festival. Cover and Booklet Design Imagecorp Pty Ltd number of the nation’s music organisations. Cover photograph Rural Landscape at West Kentish In 2004, Richard Mills conducted a revival of He is Artistic Director of the West Australian and Mt Roland, Tasmania. © APL/Richard Eastwood in Perth, when it was presented as a Opera, a post held since 1997, Artistic joint production between the Perth International Consultant with , and Director For Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra Arts Festival, and West of the Australian Music Program for the Managing Director Nicholas Heyward Australian Opera. Other Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra. Artistic Administrator Anthony Peluso engagements that year included La Cenerentola Orchestra Manager Peter Kilpatrick As a conductor Richard Mills has appeared with and Norma for West Australian Opera, concerts all the major orchestras in Australia and regularly and recordings with the Melbourne and www.tso.com.au performs in major Australian festivals as well as Tasmanian Symphony Orchestras, the world working overseas. He made his conducting premiere of Peter Sculthorpe’s Requiem with debut in the USA with the Albany Symphony the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra at the Orchestra in 1989. He made his debut as an Adelaide Festival, and the world premiere of his opera conductor at Opera Queensland with The double concerto for and with the Magic . Now, through his work with Opera Taipei Symphony Orchestra. In 2005 he Recorded 2, 3 December 2002 (Cello Dreaming); Australia and West Australian Opera, he has a conducted for the Queensland 2 December 2002 and 2 December 2003 (Quamby); large repertoire of standard works, as well as a Music Festival. 4, 5 December 2003 (Nourlangie); and 3 December reputation for conducting contemporary opera His recording Richard Mills Orchestral Works 2003 (Music for Bali) at the Federation Concert and his own compositions. with the Queensland Symphony Orchestra has Hall, Hobart. The then commissioned become a best seller on the ABC Classics label. 2005 Australian Broadcasting Corporation him to write an opera of Ray Lawler’s Summer His three-CD set of the film music of Franz Waxman with the same orchestra was awarded © 2005 Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Distributed in of the Seventeenth Doll, which premiered in Australia by Universal Music Group, under exclusive Melbourne in 1996, and received a Sydney a German Record Critics Prize in 1992, and he licence. Made in Australia. All rights of the owner of season in 1999. His second opera, Batavia, was has conducted recordings with the West copyright reserved. Any copying, renting, lending, Australian and Tasmanian Symphony Orchestras. diffusion, public performance or broadcast of this record commissioned by Opera Australia and was without the authority of the copyright owner is prohibited. premiered at the Melbourne Festival in 2001 to He was made a Member of the Order of great critical acclaim. Batavia consequently Australia (AM) in 1999.

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