Lilburn: Piano Music Vol 1

Douglas Lilburn Complete Piano Music Volume 1

Dan Poynton

massey u n ive r sity TRUST RECOR DS SERIES

Leo Bensemann (1912-1986), Rain in the Paradise Garden, Takaka, 1979, oil on hardboard, 575 x 605 mm.

Collection of Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna O Waiwhetu. Reproduced by permission of the estate of the artist.

Douglas Lilburn Complete Piano Music Volume 1

Dan Poynton Sonata (1949) 01 Allegro 02 Poco adagio 03 Allegro assai, vivace Occasional Pieces for Piano (1942-73) * 04-07 Four Preludes (1942-44) 08-09 Two Christmas Pieces for L.B. (1949) 10 Allegro (1948) 11-14 Four Preludes (1948-60) 15 Rondino (1952) 16-17 Two Preludes (1951) 18 Andante (1950) 19 Poco lento (1956) 20 Three Bars for M.N. (1968) 21 Adagio sostenuto (1944) 22 Andante commodo (1973) 23 Still Music for W.N.R. (1973)

18:59 7:01 6:23 5:36

27:03 4:02 2:17

24-29 ‘Six Short Pieces’

(1962-63) †

Sonata for Piano in A minor (1939) † 30 Œ = 60 – Allegro 31 Allegro assai vivace 32 Andante – Allegro

21:49 10:21 3:39 7:53

33 Moths and Candles

(1948) †

4:00

Total Time

1:15

* First complete recording

3:50

† First recording

0:33

6:31

2:13 76:51

1:38 1:44 0:55

MMT2053

3:51

24 bit Digital Stereo Recording

1:36

 2004 HRL Morrison Music Trust

1:25

 2004 HRL Morrison Music Trust

massey u n ive r sity TRUST RECOR DS Se r i es

Douglas Lilburn

Douglas Lilburn (1915-2001) grew up on ‘Drysdale’, his parents’ hill country farm bordering the high mountain plateau at the centre of New Zealand’s North Island. He often described his boyhood home as “para-

dise” and his first major orchestral work, the Drysdale Overture (1937), written whilst a student under the aegis of Ralph Vaughan Williams at the Royal College of Music in London, explores the home hills, bush and stream as primal sites of imaginative wonder. Recalling the impression of ‘Drysdale’, the composer wrote “I’m left with that lovely Mark Twain image of Jim and Huckleberry drifting their barge down that great river, looking up at the stars and wondering ‘whether they was made, or only just happened.’” Other prize-winning student works included a choral cycle Prodigal Country (1939) and the Aotearoa Overture (1940) which became an instant New Zealand classic.

Returning to New Zealand, Lilburn settled in Christchurch where he had formerly studied. Here, he banded together with an innovative group of painters, poets, publishers and theatre directors who were to prove vastly influential. Settings of the poets Allen Curnow and Denis Glover,

for example, resulted in two iconic works – Landfall in Unknown Seas (1942), a voyage of spiritual discovery for narrator and string orchestra, and Sings Harry (1954) which harvests the smell of gorse fires, the sparkle of mountain tarns, the reality of farmhouse dung and the jocular honesty of an ‘old-timer’. Lilburn dedicated occasional piano pieces to artist Leo Bensemann and Caxton Press editor Lawrence Baigent, and his extended orchestral tone poem A Song of Islands (1946) finds its parallel in the regional paintings of Rita Angus.

In 1947 Lilburn joined the staff of Victoria University College in Wellington and completed a series of works which received high critical acclaim, including the Symphony No.1 (1949), the Sonata (1949) for piano, the Alistair Campbell song cycle Elegy (1951) – a vision of the titanic indifference of nature – and the fervently loved Symphony No.2 (1951).

Lilburn composed the Symphony No.3 (1961), along with Sonatina No.2 (1962)

and Nine Short Pieces for Piano (1965-66) in response to a stimulating period of sabbatical leave. Masterpieces of style, these works seem to get to the bottom of life’s essential needs. Their witty and pointed rhetoric brings together language and nature, the human and the non-human, in unusual conjunctions that resonate with symbolic meanings. From this point until his retirement, Lilburn concentrated on the relatively unexplored territory of electroacoustic music. His final years were spent quietly at home, tending his garden and, until the onset of arthritis, playing his beloved August Förster upright piano. Douglas Lilburn received the Order of New Zealand in 1988.

Complete Piano Music Volume 1 Sonata (1949) Allegro Poco adagio Allegro assai, vivace The bracing lyric power of this sonata in A minor is established in the hill-shaped contour of the opening octave statement and the shadowy recesses of the chordal reply. The counterweight thus provided by chords rebounding from the octaves creates a resonance or “oversound” which emanates through the first movement, and indeed the entire work. This bold gestural opening (reminiscent of the brooding opening paragraphs of Schubert’s Piano Sonata in A minor, D.784), along with a cheerful second theme announced over a broken-chord accompaniment, instinctively identifies with the forces of nature and affirms an enduring passion for life. The curve and grain of the music partakes of an impressive physical space in a way that Lilburn described plainly as “letting our music grow out of the land beneath our feet”.

The central movement, intensely lyrical rather than starkly dramatic, seems to plough the earth. The musical heart is a lullaby-like theme which wells up out of heart-break. Cut this music and it will bleed – yet even so, consolation can be found in the warmth of wanting to feel the earth and in the sweet whisper of the closing bars.

This movement reveals Lilburn at his most humane.

If the physical push of the second movement is earthward then the psychic direction of the finale is skyward; its melodies overbrim without complication to bring the sonata into abundant fruition.

The composer’s friend and colleague Frederick Page gave the first performance of this sonata and Margaret Nielsen, a key Lilburn specialist, subsequently established it in the repertory.

Occasional Pieces for Piano (1942-73) This collection of sketches, studies and personal tributes was brought together for

publication in 1975. Written mainly for amateurs, these pieces weave a personal narrative, giving voice to the gratitude of friendship, the fold of landscape and the articulation of musical tradition.

The first two sets – Four Preludes (1942-44) and Two Christmas Pieces for L.B. – are primarily dedicated to Leo Bensemann, an artist known for his powerful regional paintings. The bells that peal through these pieces seem not only to resonate greeting but also the essential identity of Bensemann and the alpine freshness of his paintings – the third prelude in particular is notable for its shifting transitions from light to shadow.

The Four Preludes (1948-60) and several other works in the collection explore iconic musical heritage including Bartók and the Eastern European tradition in the third prelude, Chopin’s mazurkas in the fourth, gypsy bands in the Rondino and Schubert in the Andante and Adagio sostenuto (the sombre mood of the latter could

trace the lonely lover in Winterreise trudging through the snow).

Poco lento and Andante commodo are washed by tides, whilst Still Music for W.N.R. (the Christchurch doctor William Norris Rogers) and Three Bars for M.N. (the pianist Margaret Nielsen) are characterised by a profound and meditative sense of beauty which, welling out of silence, captures reclining landforms whilst reflecting the composer’s strong affinity with his friends. Surprisingly, Nielsen’s piece was written in exchange for compost for the composer’s garden; but, naturally this music is seeded in the warm earth.

Evidently, in the first of the Two Preludes (1951) Lilburn had in mind the peeping call of the grey warbler, a small New Zealand bush bird. The upward waft of the second prelude releases a sense of airy vernal daring and an overbrimming of invention which Lilburn achieves in his greatest work; the lifting power resides in the upsurge of the language.

‘Six Short Pieces’ (1962-63) Unfettered by the constraints of longer structures, Lilburn seems to have regarded his short piano pieces (of which there are several collections) as a form of liberation.

It was a genre that allowed him to experiment without inhibition, to pursue his exhaustive quest to test the boundaries of sonority and to develop a new language of sensation, feeling and thought. These six pieces, the first two composed in 1962, the remainder in 1963, pivot about expositional openings which turn into their own sensation or memory in the act of sounding. The set shows the simple, sensuous and passionate motifs of Lilburn’s work coming together in precisely adjusted balance.

Sonata for Piano in A minor (1939) Œ = 60 – Allegro Allegro assai vivace Andante – Allegro This work, composed during the period of Lilburn’s tuition in London with Ralph Vaughan Williams, is a welcome addition to the composer’s repertory. Grounded by a strong structural sense, the sonata combines

the influence of the New Zealand landscape with romanticism, reflecting what Lilburn described as an “intense individual expression of emotion” with a pantheistic mood invoking the Sublime. The sullen chords and ensuing flow of the opening paragraphs evoke a long line, like a wave gathering and breaking. This is almost a barren severity, like the rocky coast this music celebrates; at climactic pianistic moments the surf smashes the shore. The expressive tonal modulations of the second subject, with its mixture of rejoicing and weeping notes, are perfectly matched to human sentiment – joy stirs within the music to anticipate a not-impossible human happiness.

Eden-like joys engage us in the second movement – a twisting stream of semiquavers alternates with an almost mazurka-like dance in dark earthen colours. The finale, a hymn to what the painter Thomas McCormack called “the power of the sea, rivers, plains and mountains”, celebrates Wordsworthian “spots of time”, in which we become intensely open to experience and also aware of a heightened openness – aware that the moment is privileged.

Moths and Candles (1948) Subtitled ‘a dance for children’, this miniature was written for Infant Schools, a National Film Unit documentary produced

by Margaret Thompson. Lilburn simulates

the tinkle of a musical box and the recurring tune rotates like a clockwork ballerina.

Presumably the flitting moths feature in the melodic moments and the candles on the flickering appoggiaturas.

Rita Angus (1908-1970), Journey, Wellington, 1962, oil on hardboard, 610 x 863 mm.

Private collection, Wellington. Reproduced by permission of the estate of the artist.

DAN POYNTON

Dan Poynton was born in Wellington, New Zealand. His first major musical recognition came while at school when he won the Composition Prize at the 1983 National Westpac School Music Competition. In 1986 he was a finalist in the TVNZ Young Musicians Competition and the National Christchurch Concerto Competition. In

1988 he was awarded first prize in the National Kerikeri Piano Competition.

After study in New Zealand and postgraduate study in Australia, Poynton spent several years travelling the world. In 1997, he re-established his reputation and career with You Hit Him He Cry Out, a recording of New Zealand piano music which won the Classical Award in the 1998 New Zealand Music Awards.

Poynton is known as a champion of New Zealand piano music and has been in significant demand throughout Australasia, Asia and Europe especially for his solo piano recital programmes as well as for his appearances with the sopranos Deborah Wai Kapohe (New Zealand) and Sylvia Nopper (Germany). He was chosen as the sole representative from New Zealand to perform a concert of music in June 1999 at the Sydney Opera House as part of that year’s International Association of Music Information Centres Conference.

In recent years, Poynton has performed

in the Bangkok New Music Festival, the New Music New Zealand Festival in Edinburgh, the Sonorities Festival in Ireland and the Ijsbreker Festival in Amsterdam as well as in Malaysia, Germany, Switzerland, India, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Poynton tours extensively as a solo artist throughout New Zealand, and has been involved in collaborations with other musicians – including Gareth Farr and Mark Menzies – and a number of recording projects. As well as a pianist he is also known as a composer, and his recitals often include his own works.

Dan Poynton writes about Douglas Lilburn “If I have any reason to remain alive, I should bloody well get busy,” said Douglas. I found this on one of his scores during my amazing fossicking days in the Alexander Turnbull Library researching for these CDs. Douglas did work hard – and bravely.

He was a hero. To write such Romantic and new music in the musically barren New Zealand of the 1940s and ’50s meant that you had guts. And I mean that – his music

is epically Romantic (you don’t have to be a dead German to write like that even if that’s what most New Zealanders might think). It speaks of an idealistic, higher place outside our society. But it’s also nakedly intimate.

In music no one else was doing this here.

He was a loner… he told me once that his mother rang him up after his 50th birthday radio tribute and greeted him with “Douglas, you write horrible music!” But perhaps he possessed that inner self-assurance that I suppose must be part of being a genius.

But he was a painfully vulnerable and shy man. This was easy to see for anyone who met him. I first met Douglas when Jack Body took our first-year composition class to his annual ‘Drinks at Douglas’s’. What a buzz to be in the presence of the ‘Grandfather of New Zealand Music’! Douglas was quite a host. Circulating amongst us pimply wannabes with his customary gherkins, nuts and of course wine, politely offering with childlike glee and that special Douglas shrug of the shoulders that said so much – just like the grateful servant boy, but yet somehow simply charismatic. He didn’t need to say much.

Later I would get to know this hospitality more: I’d come back from overseas – unknown and penniless – moved in down the road from Douglas and put a sign up in the dairy for piano students. Douglas saw it and somehow remembered me from my student days. I got a letter (a prized possession): “…I could not volunteer for piano lessons due to my retracting tendons, but might you consider an occasional visit to warm my old Förster into its right functioning? Any such help must be, of course, at your professional rate.” That Douglas humility. I turned up on his doorstep and was shown in to that beautiful mellow old piano that only Germans could have made. Almost all his piano music was written on it. Away I played. Every now and then a hand would appear and place a new glass of wine at the end of the piano with a little grunt. After some hours Douglas shyly put his head round the door.

“How much longer do you think you might be?” (perhaps nervous about what my ‘professional rate’ was going to be).

“I’ll go soon, Mr. Lilburn, and I won’t be taking any money of course.”

“Hmm…” (a little grumpy). He came back clutching a jar of his home-made green tomato chutney. “Well, will you accept this as payment?”

Over the years jars of that outstanding chutney and many precious music scores came my way as I exercised that piano… and amazing conversations, for Douglas was a devastatingly honest man – and what you got was straight and real – even if he got people wrong sometimes, as many who fell out with him knew.

Later when I first came to record some of his music, I turned up wanting him to hear me, determined to get it right. After about an hour of procrastination where I had to read him Chinese poetry, Thoreau and match his wine consumption, he said “Oh, you’ll be fine – if people want to hear the real version they can just listen to Margaret [Nielsen]’s”.

The last part of the sentence sounded about right, but I wasn’t so sure about the rest, so I sidled up to the stool-less piano and began to play. Mumbling irritatedly he shuffled out. A bit later a chair pushed

against my legs… then came the wine… and finally, bit by bit, priceless little critiques of my playing. He couldn’t resist, but he’d only stay in the room a few moments at a time, as if it hurt him to hear his music.

This is just my story. Many others have experienced that legendary helping hand of his sliding in anonymously, usually with hard cash.

To be given the job of recording this music, much of which has never been performed before, is hard to describe. All that beauti-

ful music languishing away in the Turnbull Library. It’s unbelievable that no one has played it until we started this CD project.

Just listen to the newly unearthed A minor Sonata on the first CD – noble and strong – and you might see what I mean.

Douglas was a brave man who wrote brave music. When I was a little boy, the All Black winger Brian Williams was my hero, but I think Douglas is an even greater one now – and I need heroes.

Dan Poynton, Wellington, 2004

Leo Bensemann (1912-1986) Leo Bensemann was born in Takaka in the Nelson province of New Zealand. He moved to Christchurch in 1929 with his friend Lawrence Baigent. In 1934 he met Denis Glover who, with John Drew, had established the Caxton Press Club. It was Glover’s enthusiasm for Bensemann’s graphic work which led to the suggestion of a set of drawings for publication; and, as typographer at Caxton Press, he was involved in all technical aspects of book production with Glover. As an illustrator, he produced vivid images with a strong element of fantasy. Bensemann also assisted Charles Brasch with the publication of Landfall from its inception in March 1947 until 1978.

Bensemann painted landscapes throughout his life, drawing upon scenes associated with Canterbury: the expanses of plain, rolling foothills and the distant views of the Alps.

From time to time he also used the rocky outcrops of the Takaka Hills remembered from his childhood. His landscapes are dominated by edge and silhouette, and a sharp light; full of remembered and seen elements, dreamlike stillness and poster-like clarity.

Rita Angus (1908-1970) Rita Angus was born in Hastings and studied at the Canterbury College School of Art from 1927 to 1933. In the 1930s she exhibited at the Canterbury Society of Arts and with ‘The Group’ (ex-students from the Society who set up their own exhibitions), while working as a graphic artist. She painted extensively in Otago, Canterbury, and later in Hawkes Bay and Wellington. In 1954 she bought a cottage in Thorndon, Wellington where she lived and worked until her death in 1970.

Often described as one of the outstanding artists of her generation, Rita Angus was an independent and often solitary person. She had a strong sense of vocation and was single-minded in her dedication to her art. “I live to paint and paint to live” she is quoted as saying.

Dan Poynton: The Complete Piano Music of Douglas Lilburn, Volume 1 MMT2053 Digital Stereo Recording © 2004 HRL Morrison Music Trust  2004 HRL Morrison Music Trust A Massey University Trust Records release Recorded in the Ilott Theatre, Wellington Town Hall, Wellington, New Zealand, 6-8 December 2003 Producer Murray Khouri Engineer Keith Warren, Radio NZ Piano Technician Michael Ashby Digital Editing and Mastering Wayne Laird Executive Producer Ross Hendy Research Dan Poynton and Assoc Prof Robert Hoskins Booklet Notes Assoc Prof Robert Hoskins Design Mallabar Music Lilburn Photograph Douglas Lilburn Collection, Alexander Turnbull Library, PAColl-2547-01 Poynton Photograph Tim Gummer Sources Sonata (1949) Waiteata Music Press Occasional Pieces for Piano Waiteata Music Press ‘Six Short Pieces’ NZ-Wt MS-Group-0009, fMS-papers-2483-052 Sonata for Piano in A minor NZ-Wt MS-Group-0009, fMS-papers-2483-077 Moths and Candles NZ-Wt MS-Group-0009, fMS-papers-2483-046/10

The copyrights of Douglas Lilburn’s music are owned by the Alexander Turnbull Library Endowment Trust.

Royalties from Douglas Lilburn’s music are paid to the Lilburn Trust for the fostering and preservation of New Zealand music.

The HRL Morrison Music Trust was established in March 1995 as a charitable trust to support New Zealand musicians of international calibre. All funds received by the Trust are used to make recordings, present concerts – both in New Zealand and overseas – and assist artists to undertake projects to further develop their talents. The Massey University Trust Records series was established by Trust Records and the Massey University Conservatorium of Music to promote the work of established New Zealand artists and composers and to further the University’s commitment to excellence in research.

The HRL Morrison Music Trust gratefully acknowledges the support of the following people and organisations in the making of this recording: Creative New Zealand; Caroline Otto (Leo Bensemann Estate); the Alexander Turnbull Library; the Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna O Waiwhetu; and the School of Music, Victoria University of Wellington.

For more information about this recording or others by the HRL Morrison Music Trust visit www.trustcds.com ALL RIGHTS OF THE PRODUCER AND OF THE OWNER OF THE WORK REPRODUCED ARE RESERVED. UNAUTHORISED COPYING, HIRING, LENDING, PUBLIC PERFORMANCE AND BROADCASTING OF THIS RECORDING IS PROHIBITED.

Douglas Lilburn Complete Piano Music Volume 1

Dan Poynton Sonata (1949) 01 Allegro 02 Poco adagio 03 Allegro assai, vivace Occasional Pieces for Piano (1942-73) * 04-07 Four Preludes (1942-44) 08-09 Two Christmas Pieces for L.B. (1949) 10 Allegro (1948) 11-14 Four Preludes (1948-60) 15 Rondino (1952) 16-17 Two Preludes (1951) 18 Andante (1950) 19 Poco lento (1956) 20 Three Bars for M.N. (1968) 21 Adagio sostenuto (1944) 22 Andante commodo (1973) 23 Still Music for W.N.R. (1973)

18:59 7:01 6:23 5:36

27:03 4:02 2:17

24-29 ‘Six Short Pieces’

(1962-63) †

Sonata for Piano in A minor (1939) † 30 Œ = 60 – Allegro 31 Allegro assai vivace 32 Andante – Allegro

21:49 10:21 3:39 7:53

33 Moths and Candles

(1948) †

4:00

Total Time

1:15

* First complete recording

3:50

† First recording

0:33

6:31

2:13 76:51

1:38 1:44 0:55

MMT2053

3:51

24 bit Digital Stereo Recording

1:36

 2004 HRL Morrison Music Trust

1:25

 2004 HRL Morrison Music Trust

massey u n ive r sity TRUST RECOR DS Se r i es