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Executive Producers Robert Patterson, Lyle Chan Recording Producer and Editor Ralph Lane Recording Engineer Andrew Dixon Editorial and Production Manager Hilary Shrubb Cover and Booklet Design Imagecorp Pty Ltd Photography Aerial view of South East Cape, © APL/Yann Arthus-Bertrand harvesting the For Tasmanian Symphony Managing Director Nicholas Heyward Artistic Administrator Anthony Peluso solstice thunders Orchestra Manager Peter Kilpatrick Marketing Manager Wes Roach Australian Music Program Director www.tso.com.au Recorded 26-30 June 2000 in the Odeon Theatre, Hobart in the presence of the . Scores are available from the Australian Music Centre. For more information about Gordon Kerry, please visit www.gordonkerry.com 2004 Australian Broadcasting Corporation. © 2004 Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Made in . All rights of the owner of copyright reserved. Any copying, renting, lending, diffusion, public performance or broadcast of this record without the authority of the copyright owner is prohibited.

TASMANIAN SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA Composing is a very practical activity, and Tasmania Festival. Alban Berg’s Chamber Gordon Kerry is nothing if not a professional at Concerto for , , and 13 instruments was his craft. Each of the pieces on this CD shows also on the program, and Kerry recalls a varying aspects of a developed musical style. conversation with then-concertmaster Barbara There are common features in the ways in Jane Gilby ‘about how much she enjoyed playing a which the musical materials, while shaping work where the virtuoso role was shared around, themselves into a memorable world in each and there was so much interaction between composition, are articulated by devices which soloists and individual members of the orchestra.’ adapt themselves to each circumstance and idea Gordon Kerry b. 1961 and promote structural coherence. Like most The Concerto Kerry wrote for Truls Mørk artisans, Kerry works to commissions and with and the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra thus 1 Nocturne for double chamber orchestra 11’11 particular occasions for performance in mind. became a virtuoso piece for the cello, but one 2 Concerto for cello, strings and percussion 14’31 Each of these pieces was conceived with the where each member of the orchestra of strings Sue-Ellen Paulsen cello knowledge of who would first play them – the and percussion is required to play in a solo Nocturne, for example, was commissioned by capacity. Writing for the Norwegian cellist came 3 Bright Meniscus 8’54 Youth Music Australia and written during Kerry’s about in a happy way when Truls Mørk, in a TSO 4 Heart’s-Clarion for and strings 13’21 Peggy Glanville-Hicks Fellowship. It was concert where he was soloist, heard the 1994 Geoffrey Payne trumpet composed specifically for the instrumental premiere of Gordon Kerry’s harvesting the complement available at the 1995 Summer solstice thunders (commissioned by the ABC), 5 harvesting the solstice thunders 12’35 Academy, a group of Australia’s finest advanced and at dinner afterwards expressed his interest Total Playing Time 61’03 student instrumentalists conducted by Brett in playing any work Kerry might write for him. Dean. ‘The forces available,’ Kerry explains, Kerry wrote this concerto supported by the ‘practically amounted to an orchestra of Classical Music Fund of the Australia Council and it was Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra proportions and disposition, but considering that premiered with Truls Mørk in Hobart in 1996. The David Porcelijn conductor the focus of Summer Academy is chamber composer is delighted that the TSO’s wonderful music, I chose to divide the ensemble into two. Principal, Sue-Ellen Paulsen, agreed to make this Each contains a wind quartet and a string octet, recording. This concerto is strikingly successful with the solo piano acting as a kind of bridge.’ in combining the demands of virtuosity (as in The context in which a composer hears his own the three short cadenzas it contains, the first music played can be suggestive: when Kerry emerging from the solo cello’s introduction on a was about to begin composing his Cello richly resonant open C string, the third making a Concerto he heard the Tasmanian Symphony conclusion to the piece) with the sense of the Orchestra play his Nocturne in its New Music soloist as first among equals. The orchestral

2 3 strings, often as soloists, enter into dialogue opinion. Though his Nocturne’s challenging idiom landscapes, but also because the term meniscus effects, give Kerry an eagerly exploited range of with the solo cello in often intricate polyphonic reflects a higher expectation of its first vividly evokes surface tension. Something that additional combinations of sounds and ideas, and, textures, and they too are called upon to push performers, Kerry could nevertheless have seems still and calm, like the surface of water, is by contrast with Schoenberg’s relentlessly tense the boundaries of their instruments: unpitched echoed Schoenberg’s words ‘here, a new in fact the product of a complex of energies.’ expressionism, Kerry’s achievement is to pass writing, randomly repeated figures, high spiritual and intellectual basis can be created for Of all the pieces on this CD, Bright Meniscus rapidly from passion to meditation and back. harmonics, col legno and quarter tones. The art; here, young people can be given the is perhaps the one where Kerry’s music Geoffrey Payne and his instrument inevitably interventions of tuned percussion are all the opportunity of learning about the new fields of most beautifully synthesises Romantic and expression and the means suitable for these.’ suggested the last trump, but in writing Heart’s- more telling for being so brief. Tubular bells impressionist elements such as the opening’s Much the same could be said about audiences Clarion, Kerry wanted ‘to avoid the merely announce the first faster section. Then, at the ‘luminous’ octaves, reminiscent of Richard of listeners. Perhaps this was in Kerry’s mind apocalyptic’. The title, from the Jesuit poet Gerard end of the ‘slow movement’, the glint of high Strauss’ Aus Italien. The fast wind writing with when he chose to make Bright Meniscus Manley Hopkins’ That Nature is an Heraclitean percussion announces a nodal point, described which this contrasts will be readily recognised as commissioned in 1997 by the Canberra Fire, and of the Comfort of the Resurrection, by the composer as ‘high, seraphic D flat major part of Kerry’s distinctive sound world. Symphony Orchestra unashamedly use the does have apocalyptic connotations: chords, with the cello repeatedly trying to common chords of the diatonic system – that, The titles of several of these pieces are invitations escape through upward-rising glissandos’. and the fact that the professional but part-time … the Resurrection, to enter into Gordon Kerry’s world of reading, of orchestra might find such an idiom rewarding to A heart’s-clarion! Away grief’s gasping, Another virtuoso, trumpeter Geoffrey Payne, experience, of imagination. His word-windows put across to its public. joyless days, dejection. was to be featured in Heart’s-Clarion, in which into that world are not manifestos, nor do they Across my foundering deck shone he would be joined by the strings of Brett Kelly’s Here, however, another practical dimension was prescribe a way of listening, though they enrich A beacon, an eternal beam. Flesh fade, Academy of Melbourne (they premiered the decisive: the blank sheet of music paper as he and stimulate it. Nocturnes, for Kerry ‘are and mortal trash piece, a Victoria Commission, in 1998). ‘It was began to compose the piece for Canberra set traditionally restful or meditative pieces, but Fall to the residuary worm; world’s wildfire, tempting at first to write a straightforwardly Gordon Kerry thinking of ways to relate it to the night is also the time of dreams (good and bad), leave but ash: flashy piece of virtuosity…but the trumpet can city. ‘I remembered reading a poem entitled passion, fear and various other emotions.’ In a flash, at a trumpet crash, also be a profoundly lyrical instrument; given Canberra in April … by J R Rowland, which The intensity of Kerry’s music is equally found in I am all at once what Christ is, that I was working with the comparatively begins with a beautiful evocation of the the restlessness of the more fitful melodies, since he was what I am … restricted palette and mass of the string landscape in which Canberra sits: as in the serenity of night thought, where longer orchestra, I decided to explore that side of melodies tend to prevail. The expanded chamber ‘The image as used here,’ writes Kerry ‘is more things as well.’ A restriction can be a source of ...distances immense music dimension of the ensemble recalls generally one of hope. The piece is dedicated to clarity and strength. And glowing at the rim, as if the land Schoenberg’s Chamber Symphony No.1, with Were floating, like the round leaf of a water-plant my sister Dianne who at the time of its Schoenberg, who said there was plenty of good In a bright meniscus. its constantly changing textures and the composition and premiere was bravely fighting a music still to be composed in C major, emergence of smaller groups. Kerry’s polyphony fatal disease.’ The confirmation of hope comes composed his first purely tonal work for 28 The image is a powerful one, both in its sense is sometimes antiphonal and sometimes in the coda, where a series of common chords years, the Suite for string orchestra, for ‘college’ of sweeping vistas that are so common in horizontal, across the two groups. The varied supports the trumpet’s heart-easing, but twelve- , of whose standards he had a high Canberra, and the luminosity of such interactions, playing as it were with stereo note, melody. Up to this affecting conclusion

4 5 with its final open strings, the clarion has been The six Voyages poems from which the title is clearly defined sections ends with an altered unity within which contrasts can play exploring, its lyricism sometimes halting, its drawn were fashioned as a souvenir of Crane’s version of the music with which the piece themselves out. scurrying spectral and frequently muted, brief relationship with a young sailor he met in begins, ‘as after any time away, “home” looks reminders that the trumpet’s call is often heard, the spring of 1924. Voyages defy selective slightly different.’ Gordon Kerry has also given some revealing in the words of another poet, ‘on a darkling quotation. Crane has been said masterfully to keys to the life experience out of which this Each piece recorded here is a port-of-call in plain, Swept with confused alarms of struggle use variations in rhythm and syntax to establish music grew, what was in his head and heart and flight’. Glimpses of a sustained resolution a powerful, nearly invisible foundation. This Kerry’s musical voyage, but rather than finding in when he wrote it. The music can be heard as a are undercut by disquieting uncertainties – provides dynamic forward movement to poetry the chronology of composition stages of celebration of human existence, of death, loss dissonance, and even hints of anger, in the way with significance drawn from many conflicting development, it may be better to recognise and fear as well as sensual or spiritual joy. How the strings and trumpet interrupt each other, the and overlapping registers. Compare the some of the common elements in a musical we listen is out of the composer’s hands: as an language which forms new amalgams in the strings’ potential for energetic rhythmic composer on his harvesting the solstice artefact, this CD is a collection of pieces for crucible of each new creation. This is the patterning never settling into predictability. thunders: ‘While I hope the music is evocative various orchestral combinations, with or without and sensual, it does also concern itself with language of an ear open to music of the soloist, composed by Gordon Kerry between An affinity with Hopkins’ wrestling with finding a satisfying abstract form.’ He describes composer’s time and to the whole heritage, 1993 and 1998, and purposefully recorded in language and meaning to extrude intensely how ‘three elements of the fast opening form a neither courting easy popularity, nor prisoner to memorable but sometimes difficult images will authoritative performances by an orchestra and kind of ritornello: a dark turbulent texture given any stylistic prescription or label. The unfolding be found in the textures, structures and conductor much associated with Kerry’s music. out by bassoons, , cor anglais ‘story’ of Kerry’s music is to be sensed less in emotional charts of more than one of Kerry’s It asks to be listened to, for its musical values, against wide horn calls, a series of almost pure strongly drawn surface contrasts of sound and pieces on this CD. The music is that of a life major chords on full brass and strings; a texture than in overlapping departures in new and pleasures. deeply lived, and demands to be lived with. David Garrett glittering rapid texture of woodwinds and tuned directions. Among the technical aspects of the The affinities between music and the other arts percussion…the harmonic idiom throughout the music the composer hears and refines into were explored by the symbolist poets and piece is derived from six-note chords, each of utterance are formal designs which grow out of perhaps it’s no accident that Gordon Kerry finds which has a distinctive character as a result of a a sensitivity to the relative proportions of any in the poems of Hart Crane ‘a highly charged limited number of intervals. The rhythmic aspect piece’s constituent sections. Within and across symbolist language, a meditation on life, death, of the piece also makes much use of sudden these sections, and without diffusing his musical love, time, art and such like’. No accident, either, changes of metre, which gives the music a little personality, Kerry uses both strict and aleatoric that this poetry ‘dominated by the image of the extra energy and avoids the sense of a constant counterpoint, simple diatonic harmony sea, by turns seductive and threatening but pulse. The slow central section achieves its contrasted with the characteristic vocabulary of always changing’ inspired harvesting the changes of tempo by rhythmic modulation, six-note chords. As he composes, Kerry senses solstice thunders – music which, Kerry where a cross-rhythm in one tempo becomes and controls the elements of local and global explains, is, ‘like Debussy’s sea-epic, something the basic pulse for the next section.’ of a symphonic sketch’. Indeed the music’s meaning, the adaptability of his harmonic means tribute to Debussy’s La Mer even takes the form Kerry’s orchestral piece, he tells us, is like a kind working hand in hand with an analogous at one point of a subtle allusion. of voyage – its one movement structure in modulation of tempo, maintaining a musical

6 7 Gordon Kerry awards and fellowships from the Australian tours and in April and May of 1997 she travelled received a scholarship to join the ABC Training Music Centre, Australia Council, Peggy Glanville- throughout the giving recitals in Orchestra and, in the same year, was appointed Gordon Kerry lives in the foothills of the Great Hicks Trust and Virginia Center for the Creative castles in Bohemia and Moravia. to the trumpet section of the Sydney Symphony. Dividing Range in northeastern Victoria, Arts. In 2003 he was awarded the Centenary Three years later he joined the Melbourne Australia. Since 1993 his orchestral music has Sue-Ellen makes regular solo appearances with Medal for his service to Australian society Symphony Orchestra as Associate Principal; been commissioned by the ABC, BBC, the TSO, performing concertos by Haydn, Milhaud, through music. he was promoted to Principal Trumpet in 1986. Symphony Australia, Australian Youth Orchestra Lalo, Shostakovich, Ligeti and Sallinen, among That same year, Geoffrey was invited by the San and Ars Musica Australis. Symphonic works, Kerry is also a writer on music, contributing to others. In 1995 she gave the world premiere Diego Symphony Orchestra’s Chief Conductor, several concertos and works for voice and books published in Australia and the UK, to performance of Andrew Ford’s cello concerto The David Atherton, to appear as Guest Principal orchestra have been premiered by conductors specialist magazines and writing feature articles Great Memory, which was composed especially Trumpet. He was invited back to the United such as Mark Elder, Markus Stenz, Stephen and reviews for a number of major newspapers for her. She has also featured as soloist with the States the following year to perform with the Barlow, Mathias Bamert and David Porcelijn with and annotations for classical music presenters. Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra in CD recordings International Trumpet Guild based in Michigan. soloists including Truls Mørk, Geoffrey Payne, of compositions by and Richard Esther van Stralen, Merlyn Quaife and Francesco Sue-Ellen Paulsen Mills’ Cello Concerto. With support from the Geoffrey Payne has performed as a soloist with Celata. His works have been premiered in the Australia Council, she has commissioned works the Melbourne, Adelaide, West Australian and Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra’s Principal Cello major concert halls of Australia, the Ulster Hall from Gordon Kerry and Antony Partos. Tasmanian Symphony Orchestras and the Sue-Ellen Paulsen studied in Vienna with André and the Amsterdam Concertgebouw and have Sydney Symphony. In 1995, he made his debut Navarra after completing her studies at the In 2002 Sue-Ellen Paulsen appeared in recital been broadcast extensively. with the Queensland Symphony Orchestra and Queensland Conservatorium with Richard with pianist Caroline Almonte (broadcast live on performed Richard Mills’ Trumpet Concerto with He has written a large body of chamber works Dedecius. She toured the United Kingdom, ABC Classic FM) and performed Saint-Saëns’ the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra under for ensembles in Australia, several to Germany and Italy as soloist with the Queensland La Muse et le poète with Irish violinist Fionnuala Hiroyuki Iwaki in Melbourne and under Sir commission from Australia, and in Youth Orchestra in 1980 and in the same year won Hunt and the TSO. William Southgate in Albury and Shepparton. the UK, Germany and Russia. He has composed the ABC Concerto Competition. She was cellist Geoffrey Payne many solo instrumental and a range of choral with the New England String Quartet in Armidale Geoffrey Payne is a regular artist with Hiroyuki works as well as music specifically for for three years prior to her appointment with the Born in 1957, Geoffrey Payne became interested Iwaki’s Orchestra Ensemble Kanazawa in Japan educational purposes. Recently he has written TSO. Sue-Ellen Paulsen was one of two Australians in brass playing when he attended rehearsals and in November last year was soloist for the a number of pieces for the regional community invited to play in the World Philharmonic Orchestra and performances with his father who played Ensemble’s European tour. He frequently in which he lives. performs in chamber groups and with in Montreal, Canada in 1988. tuba in a brass band. It was not long before he contemporary music ensembles. He has His Medea has had seasons in Australia himself was playing cornet. Sue-Ellen Paulsen has been Guest Principal with recorded two CDs with the Melbourne and the USA with Chamber Made Opera and in the Sydney Symphony, Adelaide Symphony At the age of 12, Geoffrey swapped the cornet Symphony Orchestra, Trumpet Concertos and Germany with the Berliner Kammeroper. Orchestra and Australian Chamber Orchestra. She for the trumpet and was awarded a scholarship Bel Canto Trumpet. A former student of Barry Conyngham at the was invited to join the Australian Chamber to the Sydney Conservatorium of Music where University of Melbourne, Kerry has received Orchestra for its 1995 American and 1996 European he gained his Performer’s Diploma. In 1976, he

8 9 Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra David Porcelijn as Best Opera Conductor at the Munich Biennial for a production with Opera. The Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra is acclaimed as one of the world’s finest small orchestras. David Porcelijn is one of the most outstanding German-born Sebastian Lang-Lessing is the orchestra’s Chief Conductor and Artistic Director. Dutch musicians of his generation. After several David Porcelijn’s many recordings have been years mainly outside Europe he has principally made for ABC Classics in Australia. The TSO presents an exciting and diverse annual concert series in Hobart and Launceston as well now returned to regularly work with the Bergen The most recent of these is his complete cycle as concerts in regional centres. With a full-time playing strength of 47 musicians, its core Philharmonic Orchestra, South West German of Beethoven Symphonies with the Tasmanian repertoire is that of the Classical and early Romantic periods. It is, however, a versatile orchestra, Radio Symphony Orchestra Baden Baden and Symphony Orchestra, which was released in performing repertoire from Baroque to jazz, popular music, opera and ballet, and is recognised for Freiburg, Orquesta Filharmónica de Gran Canaria, 2002. Amongst others are Messiaen’s Eclairs sur championing contemporary music. North German Radio Philharmonic Hannover, the l’Au-delà with the Sydney Symphony (which won The TSO records regularly for radio broadcasts, compact discs and soundtracks for television and BBC Orchestras of London, Wales and Scotland, the 1994 award for ABC Classic FM Australian film. It was the first Australian orchestra to record the complete Beethoven symphonies, and its the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra Recording of the Year) whilst his records with recent recordings on international and Australian labels have been received with critical acclaim. and the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Adelaide and Tasmanian Symphony In 2003, the orchestra launched its Australian Music Program and in 2004 releases the first amongst many others. Beyond his excellent work Orchestras have included CDs of music by the recordings of orchestral music as part of the TSO Australian Composer Series. in the core repertoire, an abiding interest in new Australian , Peter music has also seen him conducting Sculthorpe (whose Sun Music I-IV won the 1997 Encouragement of young talent is of paramount importance to the TSO. It provides an education KammerensembleN in Sweden and the Nieuw ARIA award for Best Australian Classical program and collaborates extensively on a range of programs with Symphony Australia, the Ensemble of his native Amsterdam. A most Recording), and Matthew Australian Youth Orchestra and the Australian Music Centre. highly regarded orchestral trainer, he has held the Hindson. Other recordings for ABC Classics include Schubert Lieder (orchestrated by The TSO has performed in most of the major Australian festivals and regularly travels to mainland positions of Chief Conductor and Artistic Director Brahms, Reger, Offenbach and Liszt), Overtures Australia, touring both capital cities and regional centres. It has performed in Greece, Israel, Indonesia, of the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, Chief by Auber, the first in a series of Showpieces for South Korea, China, Argentina, Canada and the USA. Conductor and Artistic Director of the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, Music Director and Piano and Orchestra with as soloist Conductor of the Netherlands Dance Theatre and and Harp Concertos played by Alice Giles. For been a regular guest conductor of the Sydney EMERGO he has recorded music by the Dutch Symphony Orchestra. In recent seasons he has composers (with the Netherlands toured China as well as North and South America Radio Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus) and with the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra. Hans Kox and he is currently recording Sponsor of the TSO Australian Music Program symphonies by with the North He has a broad operatic repertoire, making his German Radio Philharmonic Hannover for the Powering Australian music into the future debut in 1991 and conducting German company cpo. This project has been so opera in Britain for the first time in 1994 at successful that cpo has asked him to record on Opera North. In 1992 he was awarded the prize a regular basis.

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