Sound Lounge
Starts at 8:00 pm on Tuesday, 18 December 2012
Double Happy 60/50: Karlheinz Company
Elmsly, Rimmer, Holmes
This week we are broadcasting a special concert celebrating significant birthdays of two of the composition lecturers at Auckland University School of Music: John Elmsly and Leonie Holmes. The Karlheinz Company gave the concert the title ‘Double Happy 60/50’.
The first piece is by John Elmsly. He wrote Ascend in 2008 to mark the death of Karlheinz Stockhausen and for performance at one of the Company’s 30th anniversary concerts. In his programme note he writes: “Over the years I have heard many performances of works by Stockhausen, attended a number of festivals and events dedicated to his music, and always been stimulated, provoked, given sonic food for thought. Some of the standout aural experiences were my first hearings of Klavierstucke IX, Mantra, and Stimmung.” Elmsly has included simple references to each of these works as well as melodic material derived from the name Karlheinz Stockhausen.
The concert ends with a piece by John Rimmer, written in tribute to the two of them. He says he’s based it on some of the stylistic qualities of Elmsly’s and Holmes’s compositions and he’s used their names to derive his pitch material. The title, Beyond the Call, is doubly significant, he goes on: “it refers not only to the piece itself with its celebratory ‘fanfares’ or ‘calls’, but also to the outstanding personal qualities of these two composers. Like most university staff, John and Leonie work industriously beyond the call of duty.”
Other works in the programme are Fragment for String Quartet, Is there anybody in there?, A Tedious Brief Scene, and Bottom’s Dance Nocturne and Adagio from Silver Whispers Suite by Leonie Holmes and Three pieces for piano, East Wind for alto flute and electronics, and Winesongs by John Elmsly.
This concert was recorded at the University of Auckland’s School of Music
