01. - 04. Sun Music [36'18]
05. Irkanda IV* [11'18]
06. Piano Concerto^ [22'15]
07. Small Town [6'07]
Leonard Dommett- violin*; Anthony Fogg- piano^; Melbourne Symphony Orchestra conducted by John Hopkins and Myer Fredman^
ABC Classics 4764235 [recorded 1976/77, 1967* and March 1983^; digital download released 2011]
[digital download; flacs, cover and inlay scans, no booklet]
Recording venue: ABC Music Studios, MelbourneRecording engineers: Haime Gonshor & George Hunt, not stated*^;
Producers: Rex Wallis & David Harvey, not stated*^
Here again is a programme dominated by Sculthorpe's major early compositions - the four Sun Music. These recordings of Sun Music and Small Town were originally issued on LP by EMI and unfortunately the transfer from deteriorating vinyl to digital leaves a lot to be desired. If the original masters were lost, it seems a pity that ABC didn't call on the services of a professional audio restoration engineer - such as Lani Spahr or Mark Obert-Thorne, who would undoubtedly have been able to do a better job.
Although the British-born, immigrant to New Zealand and Australia, John Hopkins, was a fine conductor, the Melbourne Symphony in 1976 was not the orchestra that it has become today. This recording of Sun Music was made before the didjeridu was added to the scoring. For a little more information about Sun Music, see my earlier post of David Porcelijn's much more recent recording with the Adelaide Symphony. I have also included a reprint of an excellent ABC article about Sun Music I in the download folder. Small Town, another early work is an arrangement for small orchestra of the third movement of The Fifth Continent; shorn of the spoken part. D.H. Lawrence set his novel Kangaroo in the 'small town' of Thirroul on the southern coast of New South Wales.
The programme is completed by an even earlier recording of Irkana IV and the first performance and recording of the Piano Concerto with Australian pianist Anthony Fogg (latterly artistic administrator of the Boston Symphony) and conducted by another British-born Australian immigrant, Myer Fredman. This fine performance and recording give close competition to the Cyslowska / de Waart recording that I posted earlier and, unlike in that recording, this continuous work is not split into five separate movements.