Ensemble Philharmonia. Recorded by RNZ Concert, 18 February 1991.
Composer Eve de Castro Robinson Photo: Gareth Watkins
Eve de Castro-Robinson has been commissioned and performed by a wide variety of performers, and her output ranges from large orchestral to vocal, chamber and electroacoustic works which are performed in NZ and internationally. In 1986 Pierre Boulez conducted her Interpolations for orchestra in open rehearsal in Wellington. Her Triple Clarinet Concerto was the 1992 NZ entry in the International Rostrum of Composers, Paris and she is twice winner of the SOUNZ Contemporary Award. She was the first person to graduate DMus in Composition from the University of Auckland in 1991 and is currently Associate-Professor in Composition there. de Castro-Robinson has often been an adjudicator, speaker, writer, reviewer and broadcaster on musical topics, and is a trained graphic designer.
During the time that Eve de Castro-Robinson was Composer-in-Residence with the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra, she included in the compositions she wrote for them, one with its tongue firmly in its cheek. Using the story of Noah as inspiration , she searched for pieces of music with animal associations. She came up with 30 and she quotes them all in her composition simply called 'Noah's Ark'. Scored for mixed octet it has been described as "a wacky postmodernist Carnival of the Animals" and involves pairs of parading players.
Eve says; "This work was composed during my year as Composer in Residence with the Auckland Philharmonia in 1991, partly as light relief after the rigours of the major work, my Triple Clarinet Concerto. It was penned specifically for the Ensemble Philharmonia, featuring Peter Scholes on saxophone. I liked the idea of a tongue in cheek musical menagerie for which I could draw heavily on well-known animal-related tunes and nursery rhymes for the pairs of instruments. There are some pretty tenuous musical connections in there, but that’s part of the fun! The 'animals' enter two by two and there's plenty of sonic raucousness with trumpeting elephants, kazoo ducks, a trombone swan and a saxy Pink Panther."
