3 Nov 2017

John RIMMER: Transcend: Concerto for Orchestra - Introduction

From Resound, 9:02 pm on 3 November 2017

This audio is not downloadable due to copyright restrictions.

Introduced by Kenneth Young.

Kenneth Young

Kenneth Young Photo: Deborah Rawson


"I have many fond memories of John Rimmer from my time at studying at the University of Auckland. During those heady days in the 1970’s when the Music Department, as it was then known, was located in one of the original, magnificent old two-story houses in Princes Street.

"John was also a horn player and, like me, grew up in the brass band movement. He was also the founder of the contemporary music ensemble, the Karlheinz Company at the University of Auckland. This sense of performance informs his work in a general sense. Theatricality and virtuosity characterise the bulk of his compositional output, especially works such as 'Transcend: Concerto for Orchestra'.

"One can sense that the composer is wanting to reflect elements of the traditional concertante style of baroque and early classical compositions, where there were prominent instrumental parts present throughout a piece, but not in the sense of it being a concerto for an individual instrument or group of instruments.

"There’s a particularly magical passage towards the end of the work where the music subsides into a soft dream-world of colour and space. It’s extraordinary in that, although most of the orchestra are playing it’s not immediately apparent such is the skill of Rimmer’s orchestration."

Listen to Transcend: Concerto for Orchestra by John Rimmer

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