Douglas Lilburn:
01. Aotearoa. Overture [8'09]
02. A Birthday Offering [11'38]
03. Drysdale Overture [10'34]
04. Forest. Tone Poem [15.54]
05. A Song of Islands. Tone Poem [16.40]
06. Festival Overture [8'20]
07. Processional Fanfare [4'01]
New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by James Judd
Naxos 8.557697 [recorded November 2004; CD/digital download releases 2006]
[digital download; flacs, booklet, cover and inlay scans]
Recording venue: Michael Fowler Centre, WellingtonRecording engineer: Paul McGlashan; Producer: Wayne Laird
Douglas Lilburn was New Zealand's first world-renowned composer and remains its best known; born in 1915 and died in 2001. The compositions here date from his first major orchestral work, the Drysdale Overture from 1937, through to the Processional Fanfare from 1961. Later in life he turned his attentions from the tonal music heard here to electro-acoustic composition. Lilburn founded the Electronic Music Studio at Victoria University in Wellington in 1966 and was its Director until 1979. Little of the works he composed there during that period are heard nowadays. Earlier, Processional Fanfare was written for ceremonial use at his university.
Lilburn's music is often said to be influenced by Sibelius and Vaughan Williams, the latter being one of his teachers at the Royal College of Music during his years in the UK. The Sibelian influence can certainly be heard in Forest and Festival Overture and Vaughan Williams to an extent in Song of Islands - but elsewhere I'm not so sure.
Probably the best-known work here is the Aotearoa Overture. Aotearoa is the Maori language term for New Zealand and its use, along with similar changes to many place names and government institutions, has been increasingly heavily promoted by local media and government bodies for the last year or so. [Interestingly, there is apparently no evidence of Aotearoa being a word used by Maori tribes before European settlement and it appears to have been invented for the Maori language verses of our National Anthem which were added in the 1920s. Mysteriously, it is described as the 'indigenous' name for New Zealand in the booklet for this recording.]
The Drysdale Overture is an evocative depiction of the remote North Island hill-country station (farm) where Lilburn spent his childhood. A Birthday Offering was written in 1956 for the 10th anniversary of the National Orchestra - now the New Zealand Symphony.
This excellent collection is beautifully played by the New Zealand Symphony [not yet forced to become the Aotearoa Symphony but I expect that it won't be long] and conducted by British conductor James Judd with a splendid recording under the direction of veteran producer Wayne Laird of Atoll Records.
Douglas Lilburn's three symphonies have already been posted here on MIMIC in the Continuum recording conducted by John Hopkins and in the Naxos recording also conducted by James Judd - both with the New Zealand Symphony.