SKU: PO.PEL12

ISBN 9781776605521.

This volume contains Lilburn's two piano sonatinas. Sonatina No.1 (1946) combines geometric patterning of classical forms with the distinctive simplicity of colour and line that the composer so admired in the work of the regionalist painters. The first movement hymns a fundamental vitality ‚Äì a fresh start in the morning land that is New Zealand; an almost geological majesty pervades the second movement and a three-note motive sets the finale in motion. Composed in the Autumn of 1962, Sonatina No.2, together with Symphony No.3, provides the fullest expression of Lilburn's last notated music before he turned to the electroacoustic medium. Spare, elegant and eloquent, both the sonatina and the symphony are rich and distinctive works that maintain a tension that keeps them taut as cords in our collective memory. Although the pianists who know the sonatina so well from the inside talk of its subtleties, beauty, delicacy and meaning, it will always be a work of immediate appeal, a work that is as much a delight to listen to as to play, a work that can be enjoyed as pure music.

SKU: ST.H438

ISBN 9790220219054.

Rhian Samuel is a co-editor of the Grove Dictionary of Women Composers and herself a composer of highly acclaimed instrumental and vocal works, including Daughter's Letters, premiered in 1996 by Sinfonia 21. She wrote Dream-Images in memory of her teacher, Andrew Byrne. Two interludes separate the three 'images', each of which is rhapsodic in mood. The last, Weeping Trellises, refers to the gentle, drooping blooms of the wisteria plant, and, emotionally, to feelings of inevitability and loss. Dream-Images was first performed by Martin Roscoe at the Machynlleth Festival in August 1997.