Named after writing, Movement II (Nachtmusik) is thusly titled because of the imagery it evokes of a still night. Something ominous approaches, tensions build, but was it just an overreaction? Wind chimes rattle, but all is calm. Movement II is about the other extreme: exploring the bright, especially pitched, metallic colors. It is a journey of shifting timbral centres, moving organically from one extreme to the next.

Recorded live in the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music Concert Hall, April 25th 2013.

Percussion - Hamish Upton, Yap Siu Yan, Duy Anh Nguyen, Naoto Segawa
Piano - Li Churen

--- II. Nachtmusik

Winner of the Orchestra Choice Award at the 2013 NZSO/Todd Corporation Young Composer Awards.

Performed by the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, recorded by Radio New Zealand.


Program Note:
Embiosis is an invented word, an assimilation of em- (in/within) and –biosis (mode of life), thus ‘within a lifeform’. It is an elegy and a nostalgia for a state of being encapsulated in a warm cocoon of safety, and a time of present acceptance. The four string soloists lead the music with tiny weeping glissandi, emoting what lies between the stability of notes. They can be thought of abstractly as the ‘life-form’ enveloped within the cushion of the orchestral surroundings and colourings. The soloists are less ‘soloists’, and more representative conceptually and timbrally of the idea of the embiosis, with a set up of a solo-tutti relationship. Embiosis is built simply upon a harmonic progression, diminuted at the end. There is a great fluidity to the lines and orchestration, an ebb and flow of a living entity.

- June, 2013	


Embiosis

From the 2014 Nelson Composers Workshop public concert. 

Soprano, Jennifer Maybee
Quartet, Peau Charmian Alex Rachel


Obłoki nad Ferrarą - Zbigniew Herbert

1
white
oblong like Greek ships
cut off sharply at the bottom

without sails
without oars

when I saw them
the first time on a Ghirlandaio painting
I thought
they were a figment of the imagination
an artist’s fancy

but they exist

white
oblong
cut off sharply at the bottom

sunset adds to them the color of blood
of copper
of gold
and of celestial green

at dusk
sprinkled with
fine
purple
sand

they glide
very slowly

they are almost motionless

2
I couldn’t choose
a thing in my life
according to will
knowledge
or good intentions

neither my profession
nor a refuge in history
an all-explaining system
nor many other things
and so I chose places
numerous places stops

–  tents
–  roadside inns
–  homeless shelters
–  guest rooms nights sub love
–  monastery cells
–  seaside boardinghouses

vehicles
like flying carpets
from Eastern tales
carried me
from place to place
sleepy
ecstatic
tormented by the beauty of the world

in fact
it was a breakneck journey

tangled roads
apparent aimlessness
fugitive horizons

now I see clearly
the clouds over Ferrara
white
oblong
without sails
almost motionless

gliding slowly
but surely
toward unknown
shores

it is in them
not in stars
that fate
is decided


Podróż - V. Obłoki nad Ferrarą (Clouds over Ferrara)

Kenny Keppel (clarinet) Alex Macdonald (viola)

Recorded & Broadcast by RNZ.

Traditionally a visual art-form, a still life is a picture of a timeless scene, an arrangement of commonplace, often inanimate objects to ostensibly reproduce a ‘slice of life’. This still life is sparsely littered with spacious swells, on the whole a very minimal bed of isolated materials that form a greater and nuanced canvas.


s t i l l  l i f e

A selection of movements from the song-cycle Podróż, composed by David Taylor.

Podróż (Journey) is a collection of 8 poems by 20th Century renowned Polish poet, Zbigniew Herbert, including one being un-set. Somewhat a cross between a song-cycle and a tone poem, the work on the whole is doleful and inevitably pessimistic. It goes through an emotional journey that takes over half an hour, passing through anger, hope, numbed introspection, and ultimately acceptance in its muted resolution.

The soprano line is realized by clarinetist Ryu Haejin.

The string quartet is Monique Lapins & Retallick Liuyi (violins), Sung Minkyung (viola), and James Churchill (cello).

Recorded live in the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music Concert Hall, April 25th 2013.

Podróż - III. Ciernie i Róże (Thorns and Roses)

Podróż - VI. Podróż (Journey)

Podróż - VII. Pożegnanie (Farewell)

Prime, for 15 players. 

Based on the numbers 1,2,3,5,7, 11

Recorded live in the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music Concert Hall, April 25th 2013.

Lao Linshu, flute
Nuttha Kuankajorn, oboe
Ryu Haejin, clarinet
Chester Kang, bassoon
Tapanuth Termboonavich, horn
Simon Baldwin, trombone
Siu Yan, Duy Anh Nguyen, percussion
Dan Le, Achira Ken Assawadecharit, pianos
Monique Lapins, Retallick Liuyi, violins
Benjamin Wong Kin Chung, viola
James Churchill, cello
Kim Kyunghyun, bass

Prime

San Francisco-based New Zealand composer David Grahame Taylor is a composer of orchestral, chamber, and vocal music.

davidgrahame