(Classical) Peter Sculthorpe - Earth Cry; Memento Mori; Piano Concerto; From Oceania; Kakadu - James Judd, William Barton, Tamara Anna Cislowska, New Zealand Symphony Orchestra - 2004, MP3 (tracks) 320 kbps

Питер Джошуа Скалторп AO (англ. Peter Joshua Sculthorpe; 29 апреля 1929, Лонсестон, Тасмания — 8 августа 2014, Сидней) — австралийский композитор, в 1997 году признанный Australia’s Living National Treasures (живым национальным достоянием Австралии).
Окончил школу в родном городе; с девятилетнего возраста он учится игре на фортепиано, примерно в это же время начинает писать музыку. В 16-летнем возрасте Скалторп поступает в Мельбурнский университет, который оканчивает в 1950 году со званием бакалавра музыки по классу фортепиано. После возвращения на Тасманию Скалторп, вместе с братом, открывает магазин спорттоваров. В 1955 году сочинённая им Сонатина для фортепиано стала первой работой австралийского композитора, исполненной на Всемирных днях музыки в Баден-Бадене.
В 1958 году получает стипендию Лизетты Бентвич Мельбурнского университета для продолжения обучения в оксфордском колледже Wadham College у Эдмунда Руббра и Эгона Веллеса. В Оксфорде Скалторп также знакомится с композиторами Питером Максвеллом Дэвисом и Джоном Кейджем. В 1960 Скулторп возвращается в Австралию и с 1963 до выхода на пенсию преподаёт в Сиднейском университете. В 1966—1967 он работает в Йельском университете, в 1972—1973 — профессор Сассекского университета.
В 1977 году награждается орденом Британской империи (офицер ордена Британской империи), в 1990 — орденом Австралии (офицер ордена Австралии). В 1980 получает премию Австралийского киноинститута за лучшую оригинальную музыку. В 1992 году, за заслуги в создании австралийской музыки, композитор удостаивается премии Sir Bernard Heinze Award. В 1997 его избирают в Национальном фонде Австралии (National Trust of Australia) в число 100 живущих национальных сокровищ Австралии (100 Australia’s Living National Treasures). В 2008 его сочинение Irkanda IV включено в Национальный архив фото- и аудиодокументов.
Создал около 350 музыкальных произведений практически всех музыкальных жанров — песни (на стихи Гейне и др.), оратории для хорового исполнения, оперы, камерную музыку и для оркестра, духовную музыку и музыку для кинофильмов.
Сочинения Скалторпа исполняли и записывали Сиднейский симфонический оркестр, Новозеландский симфонический оркестр, симфонический оркестр Тасмании, Симфонический оркестр Аделаиды, Австралийский камерный оркестр, Квартет имени Голднера, Бродски-квартет, Кронос-квартет, Анне Софи фон Оттер, Александр Ивашкин и др.

The present recording contains works that, in one way or another, are related to the Pacific region, including Australia. They were written during the last thirty years of my compositional life.
In many ways, Australia is the one of the few places on Earth where one can honestly write quick and joyous music. All the same it would be dishonest of me to write music that is wholly optimistic. The lack of a common cause and the self-interest of many have drained Australian society of much of its energy. A bogus national identity and its commercialisation have obscured the true breadth of our culture. Most of the jubilation, I feel, awaits us in the future. We now need to attune ourselves to the continent, to listen to the cry of the earth as the Aborigines have done for many thousands of years. Earth Cry (1986) is a straightforward and melodious work. Its four parts are made up of a quick ritualistic music framed by slower music of a supplicatory nature, and an extended coda. While the work is very much in my own personal idiom, the treatment of the orchestra represents a new departure. This is particularly noticeable in the way that instruments are doubled. First and second violins, for instance, sing in unison for most of the work, and lower strings often sing with the lower brass. Furthermore, in order to summon up broader feelings and a broader landscape I have added a part for didgeridoo.
It seems that on Easter Island, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, there was a population explosion. The inhabitants stripped the islands of trees, causing soil erosion and depriving themselves of building materials for boats and housing. Retreating to caves, clans fought each other, and finally there was enslavement and cannibalisation. By the time the first Europeans arrived, in 1722, the survivors had even forgotten the significance of the great stone heads that still stand there. Easter Island is a memento mori (literally ‘remember to die’) for this planet. The concern of this work, therefore, is not with what happened to the inhabitants of Easter Island, but with what could happen to all of us, with what could happen to the human race. Much of the music, then, is dominated by the oscillation of the pitches G and A flat, which the astronomer Kepler, a contemporary of Shakespeare, believed to be the sound of planet earth. I have also used part of the plainchant Dies irae, from the Latin Requiem Mass. Memento Mori (1993) is a straightforward work, in one movement. Following an introduction, two statements of the plainchant lead into music of lamentation, music which is based on the Kepler premise. Two further statements of the plainchant lead to the climax. This is followed by music of regret, which also suggests the possibility of salvation.
During the period that my Piano Concerto (1983) was written, three of my closest friends died. Furthermore I was involved in an almost-fatal accident. The work, however, is more concerned with lifeaffirmation than with death, and if I have written more within the European concert tradition than is my custom, this is because I felt that the genre demanded it. All the same, at one time I considered calling the work ‘Pacific’. In one continuous movement, the work is in five sections: Grave - Animato - Grave, Calmo, Animato - Risoluto, Come Notturno, Estatico. The first section is related to the third and fourth sections, and the second, the longest, is related to the last, although motives from the opening do appear in these two sections. Flutes and clarinets are omitted from the orchestra, so that the wind instruments used form a reed choir, consisting of two oboes, two bassoons and a contra-bassoon. It might be added that some of the musical ideas stem from both the ancient court music of Japan and the Balinese gamelan.
From Oceania (1970/2003) is based upon the last part of my orchestral work, Music for Japan. The latter was written for the Australian Youth Orchestra to play my Sun Music style, I thought of it as a present to Japan from Australia. Unlike most of my music, it contains no melodic material and little harmonic movement. Instead the orchestra is treated almost like a giant percussion instrument. In From Oceania, I begin with percussion itself. Other instruments are gradually added, leading to a section marked Feroce, ma ben misurato, and a climax consisting of a tone cluster spanning the entire orchestra. An E major chord is then twice revealed, followed by a coda, most of which is unmeasured.
Kakadu (1988) takes its name from the Kakadu National Park in Northern Australia. An enormous wilderness area, it extends from coastal tidal plains to rugged mountain plateaux, and the culture of the local tribe, the gagadju, dates back for some fifty thousand years. Sadly, today there are only a few remaining speakers of the language. The work, then, is concerned with my feeling about this place, its landscape, its change of seasons, its dry season and its wet, its cycle of life and death. Basically the music is in three parts. The outer parts are dance-like and energetic, with all the melodic material, as in much of my recent music, suggested by the contours and and rhythms of indigenous chant. The somewhat introspective central part, preceded by a dramatic section containing imitations of birdsong, is quite firmly based upon a chant from this particular area. Kakadu was commissioned in 1988 by an American friend, Emanuel Papper, as a gift for his wife, upon her birthday. The cor anglais, which is played in the quiet sections of the work, represents his voice. In the central part, for instance, the long chromatic melody played in counterpoint with the chant is intended as an expression of his love.

"A magnificent collection of some of Peter Sculthorpe’s best works. Sculthorpe seems not to have gained the recognition he deserves in the UK; especially having a UK-based publisher, Faber Music Ltd. This has long struck me as a great shame. Sculthorpe’s music has a very immediate element to it, one that seems instantly geographically linked to the wide spaces of Australasia.
Of course the use of the didjeridoo takes us immediately into the world of the aborigine. Earth Cry refers to the need of Australians to listen to the sounds of their own, surrounding, nature in the way that the Aborigines have always done. [Try the book Mutant Message Down Under by Marlo Morgan, a travelogue of a Westerner who walked, memorably, with the aborigines.] The didjeridoo possesses this earthy sound; indeed within its overtone-laden ‘voice’ is something that appeals directly to the primal in all of us. One of the strangest and most prized recordings I own – it was only made, to my knowledge on cassette, is of didjeridoo duets. Sculthorpe memorably juxtaposes the active didjeridoo of the opening with sudden, glowering Romantic strings. Many of Sculthorpe’s characteristics are on offer in this short work including motoric rhythms. He can generate tremendous excitement as well as real calm. I remain intrigued by what sounds like a laughing hyena around 8’30; is it the soloist singing through the didjeridoo? But most memorable aspect is the sense of a vast open space that appears later in the piece.
Memento Mori (literally, ‘remember to die’) is inspired by Easter Island and its great stone heads, a memento mori for this planet. Much is made of an oscillation between the pitch-classes G and A flat, which the astronomer Kepler believed to be the sound at which the earth itself resonates. The plainchant ‘Dies irae’ also forms part of Sculthorpe’s musical material. Strangely, and unexpectedly, Sculthorpe uses harmonies that are almost English-pastoral (around 3’40ff); a sort of Down-Under Vaughan Williams. But what resonates most is the hypnotic, slow-moving sense of the eternal. This is surely a reference to those heads on Easter Island; they look as if they have been there since Creation.
The Piano Concerto omits flutes and clarinets from the scoring, leaving a ‘reed choir’ of two oboes, two bassoons and a contra-bassoon to provide the wind element. Written in 1983 this was a reaction to a time of Sculthorpe’s life when death seemed a recurrent theme. Several close friends died, and Sculthorpe himself was involved in a near-fatal crash. The work serves to remind us - and him, probably - of life-affirmation and its power.
In terms of the piano writing, the work seems mostly to be the antithesis of the conventional solo-vehicle. Hypnotic, almost meditational from the off, not to mention hyper-gentle, every note drips with resonance. The piano is frequently allotted obsessively-repeated figures. Harmonies can glow, but equally the climaxes can be granitic; try around 4’40, with its keening trumpets and chord of marble from the excellent young pianist, Tamara Anna Cislowska. The cadenza around twelve minutes is gripping, and for an example of Sculthorpe’s ear for sonority just try around 17’24, where glittering piano figuration adorns a lonely cello melody. Magnificent.
The short, percussion-dominated From Oceania is the final part of Sculthorpe’s Music for Japan, written for the Australian Youth Orchestra to play at Expo ’70 in Osaka. As the composer puts it, ‘Composed in my Sun Music style, I thought of it as a present to Japan from Australia’. There is surely a Varèse influence here in the dense writing and the wind pitch-bends. Whatever the case, there is no doubting the fact that this music travels a long way in a short space of time (5’32).
Kakadu is named after the Kakadu National Park in Northern Australia, a place of huge wilderness and home to the gagadju people, a tribe that dates back around 50,000 years. Like the landscape, the music speaks of vast things. Sculthorpe injects local colour by the use of indigenous chants in his melodic material. The solo cor anglais, that crops up, memorably, on several occasions, is stunningly played here. Alas the player is uncredited. Intimations of nature, primal rhythms and a sense of space conjoin to reaffirm Sculthorpe’s importance. There seems to be no-one quite like him. This Naxos release, given its very freedom of availability, should go a long way to propelling Sculthorpe to his rightful place in our contemporary musical consciousness. Given Sculthorpe’s dedication to the powers of Nature and his evident belief that music can speak in this regard much more eloquently than words, it would appear he has important things to say. We should listen, and carefully."
Colin Clarke
MusicWeb International, March 2005