It’s summer in Oz. This week on “The Lost Chord,” escape to the Land Down Under, for an hour of music from Australia.
Alfred Hill was born in Melbourne in 1870, but spent much of his early life in New Zealand. He studied abroad at the Leipzig Conservatory and played second violin in the Gewandhaus Orchestra, under then-kapellmeister Carl Reinecke. He also performed in concerts conducted by Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Grieg, and Max Bruch.
Over the course of his career, Hill founded, and/or pushed for, important institutions in both Australia and New Zealand, including one devoted to Maori studies. He composed more than 500 works, among them 12 symphonies, 8 operas, numerous concerti, a mass, 17 string quartets, two cantatas on Maori subjects, and 72 piano pieces. We’ll hear one of his brief-though-atmospheric tone pictures, “The Moon’s Golden Horn.”
Then we’ll turn to Peter Sculthorpe, who was born in Tasmania in 1929. Sculthorpe studied at the Melbourne Conservatorium. Following a period of post-graduate struggles, he won a scholarship to study with Egon Wellesz at Oxford University. Unfortunately, he had to abandon his doctoral studies when his father fell gravely ill. In 1963, Sculthorpe became a lecturer at the University of Sydney, where he remained, more or less, until his death in 2014.
He was one of Australia’s most-honored composers. Much of his music is concerned with Australia and its South Seas environs. The inspiration for many of his works over the decades was his admiration for, and affinity with, Australia’s indigenous cultures. Major philosophical concerns included conservation and the preservation of the environment.
We’ll listen to “Earth Cry,” an evocative piece from 1986. Scored for didgeridoo and orchestra, the work is a plea for balance, suggestive of the Aborigine mindset of living in accordance with natural law and the needs of the land.
Colin Brumby was born in Melbourne in 1933. Like Sculthorpe, he attended the Melbourne Conservatorium, before studying abroad – in his case, in Spain and London – then joined the staff of the music faculty at the University of Queensland. For a few years, he directed the Queensland Opera Company. He received his doctorate from the University of Melbourne, and then returned to Europe for further studies in Rome. In 1981, he received an Advance Australia Award for his services to music. He composed orchestral pieces, music for the stage, choral, chamber and instrumental works, until his death in 2018.
If you love the concertos of Sergei Rachmaninoff, you owe it to yourself to hear Brumby’s Piano Concerto No. 1, from 1984. The work is written in the grand romantic style for a former classmate of some 30 years earlier, the pianist Wendy Pomroy. The piece certainly is a throwback to an earlier age and an unremitting delight.
Slip another shrimp on the barbie, crack open a Foster’s, and join me for “Left Out Back,” neglected music from Australia, on “The Lost Chord,” now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!
Clip and save the start times for all three of my recorded shows:
PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday at 8:00 PM EST/5:00 PM PST
SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – ALL NEW! – Saturday at 11:00 AM EST/8:00 AM PST
THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday at 7:00 PM EST/4:00 PM PST
Stream them, wherever you are, at the link!
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