Peter Sculthorpe: Earth Cry; Piano Concerto [CD]

Listening to Sculthorpe's music is quite an experience. It's as if the music takes you to another part of the world. The sonorites are unlike anything I've heard in anyone else's work. Sculthorpe's compositions are truly unique. The music is primal, flowing, intense, mysterious and intriguing. It's as if the music evokes some kind of call to the naturalistic side of mankind. This recording has several great pieces on it that are unlike any other music I've ever heard.

The disc opens with Earth Cry, a dialogue between a digeridoo soloist and a full orchestra. It is somewhat reminicient of a tribal dance. The music depicts a cry of nature. It's wild, even somewhat animalistic. The orchestra screams with bombastic, dissonant chords, and the digeridoo imitates the sounds of many wild animals. Earth Cry is a very intense experience.

Following Earth Cry, we have Memento Mori. Sculthorpe makes use of the low strings with this piece. There is a lot of mystery in the opening passages, but soon we encounter flowing music. There are some beautiful melodies played by the strings. The piece slowly picks up in tension and volume. The lush chords wash over the listener. The multiple textures throughout the orchestra are countless. The piece just unfolds. It doesn't exactly build or anything. That's the beauty of it. It just happens.

Sculthorpe's epic piano concerto is unlike any other piano concerto I've ever heard. The music is very mysterious and looming, foreshadowing the chaos and rampage that follow. The harmonic sounds in the piece are quite unusual, but accesable. It's a constant shift between the dualities of dissonance and consonance. What I like most about Sculthorpe's piano concerto is that it's not as much about the technical virtuosity of the solo, but that the soloist and the orchestra work together to paint an incredible picture. Sometimes, the soloist acts as a tinkling acompaniment to another orchestral instrument with a whining melody. The concerto is performed in one massive movement and there is plenty of room for artistic flair from the soloist. The piece builds to a resonant climax and sends the listener into Nirvana.

Following the piano concerto is "From Oceania." This piece tends to make very good use of the sections of the orchestra that fade into the woodwork much of the time. Sculthorpe features the Low Brass and Percussion sections to create a piece of exciting rhythms and incredible tension. Sculthorpe grabs other instruments to make many interesting sounds like screaming high violins and strident pitch-bending reeds. This piece is probably the most abstract of all the pieces on this album, so traditionalists beware.

The disc closes with "Kakadu," a piece that opens with an exciting rhythmic pulse but later falls in to holes of vast, empty space in the orchestra. The piece alternates between the harsh, tense sonorites and victorious, celebratory passages. There is also a beautiful and tremendously exposed oboe solo, not to mention a chorus of bird calls from the high strings.

Sculthorpe's music is especially unique. I'm not sure that I have used adequate words to describe it here. The only way you can know for sure how this music will affect you is to experience it for yourself.

Peter Sculthorpe has risen to become one of the most celebrated contemporary composers (though more so in his native Australia than in the West), and there are plenty of "greatest hits"-like CDs available. Earth Cry (1974) remains on of his best-known works, although to some ears it may come across as somewhat pastiche-like. It certainly conjures up the sounds of Australia and Tasmania - using the didgeridoo certainly helps, though it is used in a manner that does not really come across as more than a little gimmicky. This is in any case an attractive - even exhilarating - menacing score, easily approachable though not without depths.

Memento mori (1993) incorporates the Dies Irae in its evocation of Easter Island and its stone heads whose history and significance is lost and makes for an effective tone poem. The piano concerto (1983) employs sparse materials (gamelan and Japanese) to build up what is essentially a romantic piano concerto - and a very rewarding work to boost with its coruscating, hypnotic colors. From Oceania (1970/2003) stems from the composer's so-called "sun music" period, and it is more otherworldly, less earthily Australian, than the later works. There is more captivating nature evocation in Kakadu (1988), in particular the description of exotic birds.

The performances are generally very good. Judd draws some very good playing from the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, though the playing is sometimes on the "harder" side and even a little unsmiling (at least compared to other versions of Earth Cry, which is the only score for which I have heard alternatives). Cislowska is a commendable soloist in the piano concerto and William Barton treats the didjeridoo parts effectively for all I know. The recording is first-class, and this is a fine portrait of a significant composer, though I have to say that the Kronos recordings of his music remain the most mesmerizing I have come across. Recommended all the same.

Ivan Moody writes in Gramaphone Magazine:

"The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra's anthology is one of the best to have come my way, featuring an excellent selection of his work ... in finely judged performances from this excellent orchestra (the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra www.nzso.co.nz).

A must have recording for your collection!