From Ritmico Journal No 99 October 2014
From Ritmico Journal 99 October 2014
Landscape
Preludes:
Sound,
Piano,
Landscape
12 New Zealand piano preludes chosen by
Stephen De Pledge and recorded by Henry
Wong Doe
By Charlotte Wilson
“It has been a long wait, but an amply rewarded
one, for Henry Wong Doe's Landscape
Preludes… Verdict: a fascinating range of New
Zealand landscapes magnificently caught, in a
recording that no Kiwi CD player should be
without.” William Dart, New Zealand Herald, 26
July 2014
Commissioned by Stephen De Pledge, ‘Landscape
Preludes’ is an iconic suite of 12 works for solo
piano by some of New Zealand’s foremost
composers. De Pledge premiered the Preludes in
2008, but this is the first time they have been
recorded together as a suite.
Landscape Preludes: Sound, Piano, Landscape
De Pledge commissioned the first of the 12
Landscape Preludes in 2003 while living in the UK.
The journey towards the complete cycle is a story of
inspiration and determination, five years in the
making, resulting in this first collection of 12 very
individual voices that, at the same time, share
something “very New Zealand”.
It began with a Wigmore Hall recital Stephen
performed in January, 2004. He was looking for
programme fillers: small pieces that could fill out a
programme as individual works or be performed
together as a cycle. A cycle of 12 would provide
plenty of variety and immediately he thought of New
Zealand. But much New Zealand piano music was
at least 30 years old.
"I wanted to create a contemporary identity for our
music overseas, to say ‘this is New Zealand music,
this is where I come from’. At the Wigmore Festival I
was putting my cards on the table…’.”
Henry Wong Doe
Photo supplied
Stephen De Pledge
Photo supplied
New Zealand pianist Henry Wong Doe is Assistant
Professor of Piano at Indiana University,
Pennsylvania, but also a frequent visitor back to this
country. When he spoke on Concert FM’s Upbeat
about the CD release, he said he was grateful to
Stephen De Pledge for handing over what is very
much ‘his baby’.
From De Pledge’s point of view, he is happy for
another pianist to champion the Preludes.
Wong Doe says: "In terms of introducing young
students to 21st-century repertoire, there’s a lot of
value in these pieces that is not at all daunting;
many of them are actually quite accessible. I’m
hoping to tour them in the US and also New
Zealand, give them more exposure. I hope they can
be in the same kind of repertoire as Chopin and
Liszt…"
The association with New Zealand suggested the
name: Landscape Preludes. Creative New Zealand
was supportive and De Pledge commissioned a set
of three from Gillian Whitehead, Eve De Castro
Robinson, and Victoria Kelly respectively, a
triumvirate he found “very satisfying, three different
generations”.
Gillian Whitehead’s Arapatiki, ‘The way of the
flounder’, is the name of the sand flats she can see
from her home at Harwood, outside Dunedin. It is
the first of the series and “has something to do with
the advance and retreat of the tide”, she says, “a
piece of impressionism that opens with the song of
the korimako, the bellbird”. Eve de Castro
Robinson’s prelude, this liquid drift of light, is one of
the more accessible to student pianists, a
“glistening sound web” in the words of William Dart,
and Victoria Kelly’s Goodnight Kiwi is at once a
nostalgic glance at the television many of us grew
up with and, simultaneously, a moving paean to her
dying mother.
From Ritmico Journal No 99 October 2014
De Pledge’s Wigmore recital was well received, and
later that year he returned to New Zealand for a
Chamber Music New Zealand solo tour, driving the
length and breadth of the country. He needed to
select the rest of the composers and Scilla Askew,
then director of SOUNZ, put together large piles of
CDs that he listened to on his car stereo while
driving through the landscapes of the South Island.
"I started with Jack Body, because I knew and loved
his music, but the rest I chose in a kind of
purposefully organised way. My main concern was
to have a good overview of New Zealand
composers. All generations, different styles and a
good geographical spread. So there were
composers of different ages, from Jenny McLeod to
Samuel Holloway, who was very young; then from
Lyell Cresswell in Edinburgh to Gillian Whitehead in
Dunedin, and across genders as well. In the end I
had enough for two series and it was tempting to
start all over again!”
Apart from being called a Landscape Prelude, the
only directive was that the piece had to be three or
four minutes long.
The next commissions were Lyell Cresswell’s
Chiaroscuro – dazzling and dark, like its name, and
Michael Norris’s Machine Noise, both at the difficult
end of the spectrum.
De Pledge says that Norris’s piece is “impossible to
play – but I think that was his aim!” He performed
both on his 2006 Chamber Music New Zealand
tour. Jack Body’s The Street Where I Live followed
a year or so later, and is the humorous piece of the
collection, incorporating Jack’s description of his
home in Wellington. “I live in Durham Street,” he
said. “That’s third on the left, up Aro Street. As you
drive up Aro Street, it’s a hairpin bend to the left and
then almost immediately a sharp turn to the right.
Up a drive. To number 8 …” Jack’s description, as
much as the beauty of the piano accompaniment, is
impossible to resist. “I love it”, says De Pledge, “and
so do audiences – it’s the kind of thing people
remember. And it’s not too hard to play.”
Then, the project ran into a funding hiccup but Sir
James Wallace came to the rescue and paid for the
remaining Preludes. Of these, Sam Holloway’s
Terrain Vague and Dylan Lardelli’s Reign are “on
the very edge of virtuosity”. Of medium difficulty are
Ross Harris’s A landscape with too few lovers,
inspired by one of Colin McCahon’s Northland
Panels, and Jenny McLeod’s Tone Clock Piece
XVIII, from her series in the tone clock system.
Landscape Preludes: Sound, Piano, Landscape
Finally, the more accessible Gareth Farr’s The
Horizon from Owhiro Bay, “a musical representation
of the view I see at twilight”, impressionistic and
shimmering, and the mischievous Sleeper by John
Psathas.
Altogether the 12 form an extremely satisfying
cycle. “I was delighted there was such a big
variety,” De Pledge says. “It was tempting to give
them a tempo or directive, fast or slow, but I
decided to just to leave them and things could not
have worked out better. Some chose urban
environments as their landscape, some physical,
others mental, and some of the preludes are
atmospheric. Some people responded with more
aggression as well – a couple really pushed the
virtuosity.”
Stephen first performed the complete Landscape
Preludes at the 2008 New Zealand International
Arts Festival. They were a triumph and he has given
over 20 performances since, in England, Scotland,
and France as well as New Zealand. The YouTube
performances filmed by SOUNZ have been equally
popular on the internet – something De Pledge
pushed for. This major set of works for piano is
accessible for students as well as for professional
virtuosos.
The last word is from Stephen De Pledge: “…I
always wanted them to have a life of their own. You
can hear the New Zealand landscape, I think…
spaciousness in the writing, open intervals, bird
song, tolling gong-like sounds: all those things that
we think of as the New Zealand voice. I’m very
proud of instigating them and I think they will go on."
Charlotte Wilson is a music journalist and
broadcaster, and a former presenter of Upbeat on
Radio NZ Concert.
With thanks to SOUNZ.
Go to sounz.org.nz/manifestation/show/13356 for
individual scores of the Landscape Preludes.
Published by Sam Holloway’s publishing house,
Score, and available through SOUNZ online.