Bach still inspires Kiwi composer

New Zealand composer Lyell Cresswell’s new piano concerto gets its premiere performance on Thursday courtesy of the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra and Michael Houstoun.

It is Cresswell’s first major work to be performed here since he received a 2016 Arts Foundation Laureate Award.

Accepting the award, he said all he’d been doing during the years was using music to write his own biography.

“If I had used words instead of music I would simply have told a pack of lies but I find it impossible to tell lies when I’m writing music,” he said.

“I tell my story and give my view of the world in terms of feelings and emotions.”

Based in Scotland since 1972, Cresswell’s dual cultural citizenship has made two countries proud of him. centuries. Its title, Ach wie fluchtig, ach wie nichtig (Ah how fleeting, ah how subtle), comes from one of the six German chorale tunes, famously harmonised by Bach, that inspired the piece.

“My original idea was to write an orchestral score around these,” Cresswell said.

“But when Michael Houstoun played at the Edinburgh Festival in 2014, he asked me for a piano concerto and the chorales came to mind.”

For Cresswell, Bach is synonymous with his own student days in Wellington where he sang Bach in a choir and was trained to write in the composer’s style.

He sees his finished concerto as a set of variations on six specific tunes, brought together in a brilliant finale, with Houstoun playing one phrase that could almost have been harmonised by Bach himself.

The use of traditional harmony and tonality is very much a gesture towards listeners, offering them a way to chart the unfamiliar.