Chamber of delights
A compilation of Gillian Whitehead’s chamber music is a fitting tribute.
When composer Dame Gillian Whitehead received an email from young American virtuoso Hilary Hahn, she was suspicious. “I thought it must be a joke,” she says. “I didn’t reply. I left it for 24 hours.”
It turned out to be a commission from one of the most exciting classical violinists performing today, and the call resulted in Whitehead’s writing Torua, one of eight works on her new CD.
The modest initial reaction was typical of Whitehead, who is revered in music circles and acclaimed internationally.
Shadows Crossing Water collects chamber music Whitehead wrote between
1963 and 2016, and the release strongly underlines her international reputation. Recorded by six fine Czech musicians, the Stamic Quartet and colleagues, the set had its beginnings in a Prague concert of her music in 2012 organised by Prague-based American Patricia Goodson, who is the pianist on the recording.
From the shapely long-breathed phrases of her early student composition Three Improvisations for solo oboe to the sextet Shadows cross the water, premiered in Prague in 2014, Whitehead’s composerly craft is at the service of profoundly beautiful music. Her ability to evoke atmosphere and place shines throughout, whether in the “unknown landscape” of China in Tumanako or the sandflats near her Otago Peninsula home in Arapatiki.
Shadows cross the water marks the 70th anniversary of the arrival in New Zealand of 700 Polish child refugees and acknowledges recent refugee anguish, too. Premiered in Prague, the work and its title also honour two of Whitehead’s close composer friends, Peter Maxwell Davies and Jack Body, both of whom were suffering from terminal illnesses while she wrote the work.
The exceptional musicians offer confident performances: the oboe playing of Vilém Ververka is remarkable, particularly in Tom’s Serenade for Ann Morris, in which the insistent, melodious call of the korimako (bellbird) from Whitehead’s garden finds its way into her music.
It has become, like the parallel string writing found in several works, a musical signature. But what remains most strongly is the deep emotion expressed through these powerful conjurings of landscape and theme.
Her ability to evoke place – from China to the sand ats near her Otago Peninsula home – shines throughout the album.