01. Earth Cry [10'20]
02. Irkanda IV* [11'14]
03. Small Town from 'The Fifth Continent'^ [6'12]
04. Kakadu [14'50]
05. Mangrove 13'13]
Donald Hazelwood- violin*; Guy Henderson- oboe^; Sydney Symphony Orchestra conducted by Stuart Challender
ABC Classics 426 481-2 [recorded February & July 1989; CD issued 1990]
[digital download; flacs, cover and back scans - no booklet]
Recording venue: Sydney Town HallRecording engineer: Allan MacLean; Producers: David Harvey and Christopher Lawrence^
The third in this series of works by leading Australian composers, the conductor Stuart Challender was a long-term "house" conductor for Australian music with the Australian federal broadcaster ABC and a regular conductor of the Sydney Symphony. As with Sculthorpe, Challender was born in Tasmania and he was chief conductor of the orchestra from 1987 until his early death in 1991. Here we have excellent performances and sound recording throughout.
The first work, Earth Cry, the title name of the whole album, is a powerful and impassioned work from 1986 - one of Sculthorpe's most arresting pieces. Both of the other later works, the haunting masterpiece Mangrove and Kakadu feature prominent bird-song effects, Kakadu being particularly colourful and evocative of the huge Kakadu National Park in the Northern Territory, after which it was named.
We have already encountered a performance of the early break-through work, the haunting Irkanda IV written in memory of his recently deceased father, on the Richard Tognetti album posted earlier and here is an equally fine performance. Also an early work, Small Town, is the third movement of the suite The Fifth Continent and sounds a bit Copland-esque and home-spun at times with a wistful oboe main theme. The complete suite will appear in an upcoming post conducted by David Porcelijn.
This digital download, as usual with ABC Classics, came without any documentation and I have not discovered much more on the internet. However, I did find another perceptive review by Andrew Achenbach in the November 1995 issue of Gramophone magazine and I have included that in this post.