Not Dead Yet. Music from Living Composers.

The Music

The Words

Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of the ‘Classical For Everyone’ Podcast… five hundred years of incredible music. My name is Peter Cudlipp and a couple of years ago I started a radio show called,  not surprisingly, ‘Classical For Everyone’. I wanted to bring the perspective of an enthusiast… to introducing classical music to audiences that might be curious but perhaps also might be a little hesitant. I’m not a teacher or a critic and I’m certainly not a musician… just a regular concert-goer who is lucky enough to have been touched, moved, excited and uplifted by this music since he was a kid. And that enthusiasm led to the radio show and now, with the podcast… I’m after a bigger audience.

If you enjoy any music at all then I’m convinced you can enjoy classical music. You don’t have to… and you don’t need to… but there really is some amazing music just waiting for you to discover or to rediscover! All you need are ears. No expertise is necessary. If you’ve ever been even slightly curious about classical music then this is the podcast for you.

There’s a lot of music to get to grips with so each one hour episode has something of a loose theme connecting the pieces I am going to play. For today it is… works by living composers. One of the unintended consequences of a whole genre of music being called ‘classical’ is that associations with dead people and past eras can disguise the fact that exciting and brilliant new music is being written and performed every day. So welcome to the Classical For Everyone ‘Not Dead Yet’ episode. I’m going to play you music by Jennifer Higdon, John Adams, Gillian Whitehead, Brett Dean and Ross Edwards.

In 2011 the American composer Jennifer Higdon was commissioned to write a work for the 50^th anniversary celebration of the Grand Teton Music Festival held every summer in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. She called it ‘All Things Majestic’. And she described each section as a ‘musical postcard’. In her programme note she writes… “Having grown up in the shadow of the Smoky Mountains, and having hiked many of our parks, I have come to the conclusion that the National Parks are one of America’s greatest treasures. So when asked by the Grand Teton Music Festival if I would compose a work, I jumped at the chance. ‘All Things Majestic’ is a tribute to not only the festival and its home, the Tetons, but also to the grandeur and majesty of all our parks.” If you have been lucky enough to explore any of America’s extraordinary national parks you’ll know what she means.

The second of the four sections is called ‘String Lake’ and here it is performed by the Nashville Symphony Orchestra conducted by Giancarlo Gerrero. Jennifer Higdon’s ‘String Lake’ from her composition ‘All Things Majestic’. It is about seven minutes long.

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That was the Nashville Symphony Orchestra conducted by Giancarlo Gerrero with Jennifer Higdon’s ‘String Lake’ from her composition ‘All Things Majestic’. Ok, to continue this episode of music by living classical music composers I’m going to stay in the US for another eight minutes. When a composer writes a concerto they are creating a showcase for a soloist… as the focus of a modern concerto is the conversation between a solo performer at the front of the stage and the orchestra behind them. For the soloist, the composer and the audience a huge amount of the enjoyment derives from pushing a ridiculously gifted performer to the extremes of what is physically and musically possible. In 1993 the composer John Adams wrote just such a work… his Violin Concerto. And it is still being performed regularly and there are multiple recordings available. Here is the third and final section and I hope you’ll agree that this does have a fair amount of that virtuoso magic I referred to a moment ago… delivered by the violin soloist Gidon Kremer performing with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Kent Nagano. John Adams’ Violin Concerto.

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That was the third and final section of John Adams Violin Concerto. The violin soloist Gidon Kremer performed with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Kent Nagano. I hope you are enjoying this Classical For Everyone episode with music written by people who have the particular distinction of still breathing. I think it’s important to say from time to time that nowhere near all classical music is by dead men from Vienna. And there is perhaps nowhere further from the Austro-Hungarian empire than the islands of Aotearoa.. or New Zealand.  If you visit New Zealand composer Gillian Whitehead’s website you can search her list of compositions by year. The list starts in 1963. So there is 60 years of music to explore. And from that remarkable body of work here is just one piece and it is her Concerto for Solo Harp and Chamber Orchestra called ‘Karohirohi’ from 2008.

Of this piece Whitehead has written… “The word ‘Karohirohi’ —  means iridescent, shimmering, the sparkling of light on water — and that is the point of arrival rather than of departure in this piece.” If you are expecting something saccharine because a harp is the featured soloist then you will be wrong. This is at times quite unsettling music but there is always a return to that shimmering Whitehead puts as the centre of the work.  She packs an amazing variety of atmospheric textures into the thirteen minutes piece. Karohirohi is performed by Carolyn Mills (solo harp) with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Mark Taddei.

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That was Karohirohi by Gillian Whitehead performed by Carolyn Mills (solo harp) with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Mark Taddei. And now by some sort of happy accident you are going to get a section of another concerto for an instrument with strings. If Gillian Whitehead’s piece had some… what I’ll call deliberately unsettling moments this next piece I’m going to play is I think almost pure beauty. In 1995 the Australian composer Ross Edwards wrote his Concerto for Guitar and Strings for the Darwin International Guitar Festival… It is also known as ‘Arafura Dances’. Writer and composer Bernard Rofe wrote a nice little summary on Ross Edwards’ website… “Edwards, clearly under the spell of Darwin and coastal Arnhem Land as he composed, refers to the turquoise Arafura Sea as a constant backdrop. Other influences include flora and fauna of the region and the colourful Macassan sailing boats in Darwin’s Maritime Museum.” It is absolutely beautiful music. Here is the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra conducted by Richard Mills with Karin Schaupp playing the guitar with the middle section. about 8 minutes long.

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That was the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra conducted by Richard Mills with Karin Schaupp playing the guitar with the middle section of Ross Edwards’ Concerto for Guitar and Orchestra. As a man of a certain age I have a rather unhealthy obsession with the 1960s space race between the USA and the USSR. The Australian composer Brett Dean seems to share this. Though that might be wishful thinking. But he did in 2007 compose an eight minute piece he called ‘Komarov’s Fall’ inspired by the death of the Soviet Cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov… killed in the Soyuz 1 spacecraft in 1967. About the composition, Brett Dean wrote…

As I began work on this commission, the initial sonic inspiration came via the eerie, lonely beauty to be found in recordings of space telemetry signals, but chancing upon a vivid archival recording of Komarov’s frantic discussions with the control centre from on board his craft further informed the dramatic urgency of the work.

Of everything I’ve played you in this episode featuring living composers; this work probably makes the least concessions to the idea of music being primarily ‘for pleasure’. Which is not to say that there is not pleasure to be taken here but this is not about music to make babies smarter or something with a toe tapping bounce… this is an incredible musical picture of the dramatic tension and the perils of human striving. Here is Hugh Wolf conducting the Sydney Symphony Orchestra with Brett Dean’s ‘Komarov’s Fall’.

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That was Hugh Wolf conducting the Sydney Symphony Orchestra with Brett Dean’s ‘Komarov’s Fall’. My name is Peter Cudlipp and you have been listening to The ‘Classical for Everyone’ Podcast. If you would like to listen to past episodes or get details of the music I’ve played please head to the website classicalforeveryone.net.There you will also find some mini-episodes that address some of what I want to call the vexing questions for a listener new to Classical Music like… ‘Are conductors actually important?’; ‘Why does the word ‘sonata’ keep turning up?’ and ‘Why is some classical music so damn long?’. That web address again is classicalforeveryone.net.

I hope you have enjoyed this episode of ‘Classical For Everyone’. If you want to make sure you don’t miss the shows as they are released then please Subscribe or Follow wherever you get your podcasts. That would also mean the search algorithms will smile more benignly on the show and it might reach a few more people. For that I would be very grateful. And if you want to get in touch then you can email… info@classicalforeveryone.net. Thanks for your time and I look forward to playing you some more incredible music on the next ‘Classical For Everyone’.              

This podcast is made with Audacity Software for editing, Wikipedia for Research, Claude for Artificial Intelligence and Apple, Sennheiser, Sony, Rode and Logitech for hardware… The music played is licensed through AMCOS / APRA. Classical For Everyone is a production of Mending Wall Studios and began life on Radio 2BBB in Bellingen NSW, Australia thanks to the late, great Mr Jeffrey Sanders. The producers do not receive any gifts or support of any kind from any organisation or individual mentioned in the show. But, never say never.

And if you have listened to the credits… here is a little bonus for you… a bit more John Adams. Here is his ‘Short Ride On A Fast Machine’ Edo de Waart conducts the San Francisco Orchestra. Thanks again for listening.

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