1. Port Essington
2. Lament for Strings
3. Irkanda 4, for solo violin, strings & percussion
4. Sonata for Strings

Australian Chamber Orchestra
John Lasher - Art Direction

The first work is a suite for string trio and string orchestra,
 the third work is for solo violin, strings and percussion.
 
Recorded December 1983, Sydney Opera House Recording Hall.

Born in Launceston, Tasmania in 1929, Sculthorpe was educated at Launceston Church Grammar School, the University of Melbourne, and Wadham College, Oxford. He was Emeritus Professor at the University of Sydney, where he began teaching in 1964, a Harkness Fellow at Yale University, USA, and a visiting professor at Sussex University, UK, in 1971-72.

Sculthorpe's rich and varied compositions (including an astonishing eighteen string quartets) are regularly performed and recorded throughout the world. His preoccupation with Australian landscape, environmental issues and the frailty of the human condition can be heard in works such as Earth Cry (1986) and Requiem (2003). The latter grew from his concern about women and children killed in the war in Iraq. While his String Quartet No. 16 (2006) addressed the plight of asylum-seekers in Australia detention centres, his String Quartet No. 18 (2010) was devoted to climate change. His output relates closely to the unique social and physical characteristics of Australia, and to the cultures of its Pacific Basin neighbours. Influences included much of the music of Asia - especially that of Japan and Indonesia - and, later, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island music and culture.

Appointed OBE in 1977 and AO in 1990, Sculthorpe was elected one of Australia's National Living Treasures in 1998 and was recipient of a Silver Jubilee Medal. An Honorary Foreign Life Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, he held honorary doctorates from the universities of Tasmania, Melbourne, Sussex, Griffith and Sydney and in 2011 was awarded the Encomienda de la Orden de Isabel la Católica by Juan Carlos I of Spain. Sculthorpe died in 2014. --- petersculthorpe.com.au

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1 Cello Dreaming, for cello & ensemble		18:07

Quamby, for chamber orchestra (with optional didjeridu)
2 Prelude	3:15
3 In the Valley		5:23
4 From High Hills	4:59
5 At Quamby Bluff	7:43

6 Nourlangie for guitar, strings & percussion	21:19
7 Music for Bali, for orchestra		3:56

Sue-Ellen Paulsen - cello
Karin Schaupp - guitar
Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra
Richard Mills – conductor

Sculthorpe is the senior figure in the Australian Composer Series and this marks the tenth and last volume I’ve reviewed. They have all impressed me. The level of booklet information has been consistently thoughtful – the mixture of biographical and textual detail has been just right. And the playing of the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, here under Richard Mills once again, has been irreproachable. You can be assured that these are no sight-reading sessions – a lot of time and effort went into these recordings and the results reflect well on all concerned.

Cello Dreaming was written in 1988. Its quiet and meditative writing is immediately arresting. Suggestions of indigenous melody is here and with Sculthorpe taking the soloist very high we hear – or think we hear – the sound of birdsong. Predominately lyric Sculthorpe is meticulous in keeping his orchestration clear – the lines are never occluded or clogged. And the gently tumbling motifs, whilst more orthodox, also add to the sense of variety and vibrancy – note also what sounds like a didgeridoo imitation at about 12:00.

Quamby derives from Sculthorpe’s Fourteenth String Quartet and was arranged for chamber orchestra in 2000. It’s cast in four movements - Prelude, In the Valley, From High Hills and At Quamby Bluff. There are certainly graver intimations – especially the ominous horn writing in the second movement - but there are also warm ones too; try the liquid flute melody in From High Hills. In the final movement we hear not only the horns’ unease but a hymnal passage and the resolution that the winds in general - and the flutes in particular - bring. Nourlangie is a work that resonates with the sense of space and chorale beauty that Sculthorpe so often brings. It was dedicated to John Williams and is here most adeptly played by Karin Schaupp. Dance patterns are at its heart and a light, breezy freedom brings with it more athletic flamenco-inspired athleticism and a renewal of the avian cries that populated Cello Dreaming.

Music for Bali is by a long way the earliest work, dating from 1968. It took on a deeper resonance after the 2002 terrorist bombings. Brief, slow and evocative it derives from a larger-scale work for wind quintet and percussion called Tabuh Tabuhan.

The only glitch at all concerns too short a gap between the first two pieces but other than that, as noted in my first paragraph, this is an excellently realised disc and part of a model series. ---Jonathan Woolf, musicweb-international.com

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1 	Earth Cry (1986) 	13:55
2 	Memento Mori (1993) 	14:29
3 	Piano Concerto (1983) 	21:26
4 	From Oceania (1970/2003) 	5:32
5 	Kakadu (1988) 	15:44

Piano – Tamara Anna Cislowska
Didgeridoo – William Barton (track 1)
The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra
Conductor – James Judd 

A sense of adventure pervades the music of Peter Sculthorpe, an eclectic composer who has mingled sounds of the Pacific islands and Australia with the timbres of the western symphony orchestra to dramatic effect. However, this mingling of cultures sometimes sounds forced and too obvious, and Sculthorpe's music occasionally takes on the artificiality of a Hollywood soundtrack. This 2004 release from Naxos requires a suspension of disbelief, and listeners should hear the whole disc before passing judgment. Best of the selections is the Piano Concerto (1983), where Sculthorpe's blending of Japanese music and Balinese gamelan with the European form is quite subtle. Tamara-Anna Cislowski's delicate solo part is well-integrated with the exotic orchestral colors, and the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, directed by James Judd, delivers its most sensitive performance here. Also appealing is the heavily percussive From Oceania (1970-2003) where, again, Sculthorpe mixes his eastern and western sonorities judiciously. But Earth Cry (1986) and Kakadu (1988) are more overtly symphonic, and Sculthorpe's slick orchestration and bombastic action music undercut the effectiveness of the didgeridoo in the former and the imitations of birdsongs in the latter. Naxos offers clear and resonant sound in all but the subdued Memento Mori, the least compelling piece of the program. --- Blair Sanderson, allmusic.com

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