ISCM World New Music Days - 'Ngā Kaiwaka'

Andrew Beer and Sarah Watkins perform a programme of music from Aotearoa, Belgium, Canada, Israel, and Switzerland.

ISCM – the International Society for Contemporary Music – holds a festival every year somewhere in the world. That is, when they aren’t cancelled because of pandemics.

New Zealand was to hold the festival for the very first time in 2020. That didn’t happen, but in 2022 it did, although its scope was still a little reduced from what had been hoped for due to lingering problems with international travel. But in the end, 50 or so people did manage to come to the events in Auckland and Christchurch, including 23 composers whose works had been selected for performance.

Glenda Keam, the President of the ISCM and Director of the World New Music Days series of concerts speaks to Tim Dodd:

Other World New Music Days concerts:
Tiraki
Kēkēao

This concert is titled ‘Ngā Kaiwaka’ which means “threatening clouds on the horizon”. It features music for violin, or sometimes viola, and piano.

Denis BOSSE: Alarme

Belgian composer Denis Bosse's programme note for Alarme reads in part, “current spectral research leaves me very dissatisfied because […] it leaves out the subjective relationship to the timbre. The sound of a bell is not the same for anyone, even if it is possible to make an objective description of it. My current research is the exploration of inner sound territories related to the sounds of the world. This approach could be argued to originate with Debussy. There is no need for a computer or algorithm for this research, it is a question of letting the sounds come, to hear them, to accept them and to write them. And how many alarms resonate in daily life!”

Reuben JELLEYMAN: Variations

The ‘theme’ of these variations is just a short descending scale and each variant of it has morphed infinitesimally from the last.

Rodney SHARMAN: Gratitude

Canadian composer Rodney Sharman wrote his piece ‘Gratitude’ for violist Barry Shiffman in memory of a mutual friend. Shiffman commented when he first received the work that it “really has a sense of timelessness, loss and beauty.”

Salina FISHER: Reflect

The composer Salina Fisher writes: “Reflect is a particularly personal piece that allowed me to release some heavy emotions that I was unable to express through words. These were in response to events in my life, including revisits to destroyed places in post-quake Christchurch (my hometown), that left me longing for a past time. I was drawn to the solo viola's likeness to a lone human voice, particularly its lamenting qualities. The middle harmonics section provides a sort of timbral 'escape', which is disrupted by harsh outbursts in the final section.”

Reflect is written for solo viola.

Menachem ZUR: Sonatina for viola and piano

Sonatina for Viola and Piano was written in 2017. It has three short movements. The atonal material is nourished both by a 12-tone series and by development technique that is learned from set theory.

Gillian Karawe WHITEHEAD: Tōrua

About Tōrua, Gillian Whitehead writes: “As I began writing the piece in February 2011, the second devastating Christchurch earthquake shook the country; something of that time influenced the music, whose Māori title carries the ideas of a change of direction in wind or current, a weaving pattern, a duet. The song of a korimako, or bellbird, which was singing vociferously outside my window as I was writing, also got into the piece.”

Josiah CARR: dance

Josiah Car wrote this piece especially for Andrew Beer and Sarah Watkins in 2019.

He says he was particularly captured by a quote by writer C Joybell C:

“The dance between darkness and light will always remain – the stars and the moon will always need the darkness to be seen, the darkness will just not be worth having without the moon and the stars.”

Esther FLÜCKIGER: Guarda i lumi

Swiss composer Esther Flückiger writes in her programme note: “The starting point for this composition is the examination of the theme of migration. The title ("look at the lights") refers to the lights in daily life, an allusion to the search for beauty, warmth and peace in the tragedy of the lives of migrating people.”

The piece is in five sections played without breaks. The subtitle for the work calls them “5 migrating sound images”.

Recorded by RNZ Concert, Loft at Q Theatre, 27 August 2022
Producer: Tim Dodd
Engineer: Rangi Powick