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Ralph Vaughan Williams
SINFONIA ANTARTICA (Seventh Symphony) by Ralph Vaughan Williams.
Perhaps you have seen the vintage 1949 film Scott of the Antarctic. The background music, by one of Britain’s greatest 20th century composers, was later arranged into his Seventh Symphony, which premiered in 1953 and is still considered to be the mother of all recorded Antarctic music. The scoring includes a wind machine and conveys the struggle and desolation of Robert Scott’s final journey. It is a dark, deep, dreary and depressing work, not to be played on a Walkman or iPod on an exercise bike. There are many recorded versions and listeners may find their individual tastes and preferences among the various issues.
The Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra’s recording of this work in 1998 with conductor Kees Bakels, on the budget-priced NAXOS label, is a real bargain at a third of the price of some of the more expensive ones. The booklet notes are informative but why, oh, why feature a cover photo of Greenlanders hunting in the ice, when this is supposed to be the South? Naxos 8.550737
The second release in 1998 of this classic Antarctic music, performed by the Hallé Orchestra, conducted by Sir John Barbirolli, is no spring penguin. The full symphony was premièred in January 1953 by Barbirolli and the present performance was recorded in June 1953. This reissue on CD is now the oldest of the eleven performances of the Symphony currently available on disc.
The issued performances are:
1. Sir John Barbirolli, Hallé Orchestra (Manchester), recorded June 1953; 1998 EMI 7243 5 665434 2 7
2. Kees Bakels, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, recorded September 1996; 1998 NAXOS 8.550737
3. Andrew Davis, BBC Symphony Orchestra, recorded March 1996; 1997 TELDEC 0630-13139-2
4. André Previn, London Symphony Orchestra, recorded 1968; 1995 BMG/RCA 74321 29248; also issued as 1985 BMG 60590-2-RG
5. Raymond Leppard, Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, recorded March 1992; 1993 KOSS Classics KC - 2214
6. Leonard Slatkin, Philharmonia Orchestra, recorded June & November 1991, November 1992; 1993 BMG 09026-61195-2 (this release has been discontinued)
7. A) Adrian Boult, London Philharmonic Orchestra, recorded November 1969; 1991 EMI Classics CDM 7 64020 2
B) Boult’s original mono recording by the same orchestra in December 1953 was reissued in a collection of Vaughan Williams’ symphonies in 2002; Decca 4732412. Also issued in 1989 as Decca/London 425 157-2
8. Vernon Handley, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, recorded April 1990; 1991 EMI Eminence CDM 7 64034 2; the same performance is also available on a Classics for Pleasure compilation (2002) EMI 7243 5 75313 2 0
9. Bryden Thomson, London Symphony Orchestra, recorded June 1989; 1989 Chandos CHAN 8796
10. Bernard Haitink, London Philharmonic Orchestra, recorded 1985; 1986 EMI CDC 7 47516 2
THE FILM MUSIC OF RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS Volume I (2002)
What may be Vaughan Williams’ best film score, the music for Scott of the Antarctic, released in 1949, is now presented as a whole for the first time on CD. In the film, less than half of the original score was used; many of the movements played on this CD were shortened for the film and have not been heard in full, others were not used at all. Vaughan Williams later reworked the film score into the Sinfonia Antartica (7th Symphony), which still remains the standard for classical Antarctic symphonic music today.
The 41-minute suite on this CD contains all the music composed for the film over eighteen separately titled themes, nearly as long as the full symphony. It is a treat to hear the never-before-heard themes and music, which has, dare we say it, been frozen and iced over for more than 50 years. The suite was played by the BBC Philharmonic under Rumon Gamba. Chandos Chan 10007
VAUGHAN WILLIAMS - SYMPHONY NO. 6/ FILM MUSIC (2000)
Vaughan Williams’ classic 1953 Sinfonia Antartica (7th Symphony) was developed from the soundtrack music of the British Ealing Studio’s 1949 film Scott of the Antarctic. The present CD of Vaughan Williams’ film music may be the first to present the original film music in disc format. The seven short pieces (totalling eight minutes), played by The Philharmonia Orchestra in 1948, conducted by Ernest Irving, were first issued on a 78 rpm record and represent various key scenes from the movie and most of them are recognizable in the later full symphony movements. Pearl GEM 0107 www.pavilionrecords.com; The same pieces were also released on another Pearl compilation, BRITISH FILM MUSIC Volume 1 (2000), which has a cover photo of a sun blaring over a typical Antarctic coastal scene of mountains and pack ice. Pearl GEM 0100.
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Other Classical Antarctica:
ON COURSE by Laurie Altman (2008)
Laurie Altman is an assistant professor of music at Westminster Choir College of Rider University in Princeton, New Jersey. He has received many classical commissions for compositions and has performed as a jazz artist in numerous clubs and events worldwide. This CD is a compilation of his compositions dating from 1985 and contains the 13-minute, 3-part Suite, Three Antarctic Songs for Baritone and Piano, which includes the tracks On Course, Within Limitless Space and Does an Emperor Penguin Meditate. The baritone is Elem Eley, with Laurie Altman at the piano. The second piece is the 5?-minute On Course for Instrumental Octet, which includes flutes, clarinet, piano vibraphone, violin, maracas and conductor. Laurie told us that “the Antarctic pieces found their inspiration from a trip that my wife and I took to Antarctica in February of 2006. The CD contains two On Course Pieces: An instrumental Octet and a setting of three Antarctic poems of mine for Baritone and Piano. There were numerous other pieces that emerged as a result of that trip as well.”
According to the liner notes for Three Antarctic Songs, “I became haunted with trying to find a sound that would take me closer to the emptiness, the vastness, the color and pristine stillness of that place. (Wide spacings; few clusters; a joining of some – ancient and new). The two outer pieces of the set, On Course and Does an Emperor Penguin Meditate are short and relatively straightforward in their presentation. Within Limitless Space truly attempts to capture the emptiness and vastness to which I alluded earlier. The three falsetto insertions were almost like a voice, Shackleton’s perhaps, speaking (da lontano) from the sea, a faint ember, “seemingly to nowhere”. On Course, the instrumental octet, is the most overtly programmatic work on the CD. It is to be heard with the breeze in your face, fourteen knots of speed underfoot, all attended by weather, ship motion and the natural elements of light, birds, ice and seals all around. Structural content is almost song-like: AABCA with an intense and dramatic ostinato mantra carrying the piece and its players forward and On Course. It is for me a tone painting, a work of color and vibrancy, never wavering in both its intensity and relentlessness.” The cover photograph of misty blue-grey pancake sea ice was taken by Laurie’s wife, Jeannine Hummel, on this 2006 trip with National Geographic.
Lyrics for On Course, about being in the Drake Passage: “The thrust, the push forward,“Steady”, “Port Ten”, “Starboard Five”, pitch and roll, a wave, the hint of a breeze, “Midships”, getting there, vacuous space. Waiting, observing, fingers chilled, tears, the wind, frigid, unremitting, “Steady”, the sky, grey, painted on, sculpted, an Albatross alone in search of, diving, drifting, “Port Ten”, Seals floating, the thrust, the push breathless, surrounded all sides, water spraying, “Starboard Five”, everything moving, “Steady”, forward, getting there, fleeting, head wind, getting there, the thrust, the push, getting there, forward, forever, On Course. On Course.”
Lyrics for Within Limitless Space, about being in the Weddell Sea: “Within limitless space, an ice field blue, white and grey. Four a.m., a sky, textured, tufted with light shards. Pin pricks, crystals expanding, rolling, compressed, broken, blue, a Petrel in flight, seemingly, to nowhere. Within limitless space, The weight of an iceberg, below itself, rolling, calving breaking apart, the eye sees beginning, limitless space to be filled (a music score), the horizon. A Chinstrap Penguin, floating sideways, seemingly, to nowhere. In a turn a mountain broken off, something larger, before the sea, yielding to nothing but itself. A lone Weddell Seal, asleep, awakens to space, limitless (no less tomorrow than today). Warmed by the sun deep in a dive, seemingly, to nowhere.”
Lyrics for Does an Emperor Penguin Meditate?, on Booth Island: “Thirty five days, molting, tall upon snow and ice, frigid, a promontory, wind, fifty knots, barely, a quiver. Determined, elemental proof of something so unique, a way of being. Do you question As you wait. Do you Dear Penguin, ever Meditate?
Albany Records TROY1041; www.albanyrecords.com; www.lauriealtman.com
MUSIC FROM SEVEN CONTINENTS Vol. 3 by the Cincinnati Boychoir (2008)
Founded in 1965, the Cincinnati Boychoir, directed by Randall Wolfe, gives numerous local subscription concerts and has performed with the Vienna Boys Choir, symphony orchestras, and gives concerts for community organizations as well as touring internationally. Their latest CD includes four song tracks related to the seventh continent, Southward, The Maid’s Lament and The Ice King by Gerald S. Doorly and Humpback Whales by Wendy Mae Chambers. The Morning was the relief ship sent to resupply Robert Scott’s Discovery Expedition of 1901-04 and during its 1902 voyage to Antarctica, the third officer, Lieut. Gerald Doorly, a talented pianist and entertainer, and the chief engineer, J.D. Morrison, as lyricist, collaborated on a collection of songs that were performed during musical evenings on the ship’s piano, accompanied by riotous noisemaking. More in the vein of Victorian parlour songs than sea shanties, the songs were published in 1943, apparently in a very tame version of the originals. Wendy Mae Chambers is a New Jersey-based pianist and composer who travelled to the Antarctic Peninsula in 1999 and recorded a solo piano CD ANTARCTICA SUITE, which included Humpback Whales. Randall Wolfe told us that in concert “The boys make sounds of whales and dolphins (and can imitate the sounds remarkably well), while some boys pour water from one plastic pitcher into another and also back and forth between plastic glasses, while other boys make bubble sounds with their lips. We ask the audience to close their eyes and imagine travelling underwater to Antarctica. The boys love this music!” www.cincinnatiboychoir.org; (see also THE SONGS of the ‘MORNING’: a Musical Sketch by G. S. Doorly (2002) in this section below and also ANTARCTICA SUITE by Wendy Mae Chambers (1999) in the following “Non-Classical, all or significantly Antarctic” commentary.)
STRING THEORY and CINEMATIC WINGS (both 2007) by Jeffrey Gold (Web site download only)
Gold, based in Utah, is a multi-talented film producer, composer, playwright and university film/theatre educator. From an early start as a published physicist and mathematician, while still an undergraduate, his films, compositions and plays have premièred in both the U.S. and Britain and won many awards. His collection of instrumentals on String Theory includes the tracks Shackleton (Theme) and Shackleton (South Georgia Island). Cinematic Wings has Shackleton’s Return and Antarctica by Air. All of these are beautiful, lush, majestic pieces with rich symphonic strings. Jeffrey told us that “The motivation for the tracks is the inspiration that Antarctica alone generates. There are people drawn to Antarctica for reasons they do not understand; I am one of those people. I suppose it is the pristine serenity and Shackleton’s adventure is the best survival story in existence.” www.jeffreygold.com
SHADOW DANCES - GUITAR MUSIC BY NIGEL WESTLAKE - Played by Slava Grigoryan (2006)
Australian Grigoryan (a native of Kazakhstan) recorded this performance of fellow Australian Nigel Westlake’s Antarctica – Suite for Guitar and Orchestra in 2004 with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. The guitar concerto was completed in 1992 and had its origin from his soundtrack to the IMAX film of the same name. The four movements, totalling 23 minutes on this CD, rework musical ideas from the film, as well as developing others not included in it. The four tracks are The Last Place on Earth, Wooden Ships, Penguin Ballet and The Ice Core – Finale. ABC Classics 476 5744; www.rimshot.com.au (Nigel Westlake’s web site)
PLANET EARTH - Music from the BBC TV Series – music composed and conducted by George Fenton (2006)
BBC’s massive 11-part television documentary about the earth’s various and extreme habitats goes from pole to pole and oceans to mountains. The ICE WORLDS instalment includes the following lavish symphonic themes performed by the BBC Concert Orchestra: Discovering Antarctica, The Humpbacks’ Bubblenet, Everything Leaves but the Emperors, The disappearing Sea Ice, Lost in the Storm. EMI 0946 381891 2 1; www.bbc.co.uk/nature/animals/planetearth
WORKS by Brian Bennett (2005)
This is a 4-CD box set of four of Brian Bennett’s film scores, which includes the soundtrack of GREAT NATURAL WONDERS OF THE WORLD, a 2002 Christmas/New Year BBC Natural History film produced by Peter Crawford and narrated by the ubiquitous Sir David Attenborough. One of the tracks in this visit to various landscapes of the earth is South to Antarctica, a sweeping orchestral theme portraying the icy mysteries of the continent. Brian Bennett, in addition to having won many awards for his film and TV compositions, arrangements and productions, was awarded the OBE from the Queen of England in 2004 for his services to music. Brian is also a drummer and member of Britain’s iconic rock group, the Shadows, which began as the backing band for Cliff Richard in 1959. They became one of the most successful acts in Britain in the 1960s and went on to great acclaim as an independent instrumental group with countless records. www.brianbennettmusic.co.uk
JOURNEYS by Young Voices of Melbourne (2005)
Young Voices of Melbourne is an Australian choir, founded in 1990, by its director, Mark O’Leary. With 130 singers between 6 and 18 years of age, it has traveled internationally and is committed to the performance of new Australian music. One of the tracks on this disc is the 6? minute Shackleton, for 3-part voices and piano, by the Sydney, Australia composer and performer Paul Jarman. The piece is from his song cycle Turn on the Open Sea, which pays tribute to the adventurers of the sea. It was commissioned for the Sydney Children’s Choir in 2001. According to the liner notes, “The triumphant story of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Endurance expedition to the Antarctic in 1914 has become one of the popular tales of modern exploration. Against all odds, Shackleton and his men survived a two-year ordeal, trapped without a ship, during a freezing winter in the most remote and unexplored region of the globe. Thanks to intuitive leadership and incredible persistence, Shackleton not only returned to Europe, but did so without losing a single crew member. The impossible boat journey across the great Southern Ocean in the 20-foot ‘James Caird’, and the successful navigation of South Georgia remains the greatest quest in the annals of the sea. On returning to England, several of the crew enlisted to fight on the red fields of Flanders, and within weeks, two men perished in battle.” The song is a very beautiful hymn to the irony of their return – simple, elegant and one of our favourite Antarctic melodies. Lyrics are:
“Old man, looking out to the sea, This time he’s leaving, Windswept hair and strong old bones, Now gently fading no longer sailing.
Oh many years ago, can you remember? The haunting cry of a ship that drowned, Beneath the ice floe of the Weddell Sea.
Times were hard, but we made it over, Made it over, they wonder why, Through the cold, but we made it over, Made it over, they’ll never know.
Two years trapped in the southern sea, Far from our homeland, Roaring waves and wailing winds, May well defeat us, but hopes were high. Oh please tell me why, we’re most forgotten, Far away from a world at war, Who needs a hero, Who needs to know?
Times were hard, but we made it over, Made it over, they wonder why, Through the cold, but we made it over, Made it over, they’ll never know. Why, why, did we have to come home to war? Why, why, why? Try, try, tell me what are we fighting for? Try, try, try.
Then, on the red fields of Flanders, All men were fallen, A bloody war, fought on every shore, Brought pain and sorrow to a sailing man.
But I still hear the steam whistle blowing, ‘Twas the day of wonders, Frozen tears and heartfelt cheers, Never forgotten, We made it over.
Times were hard, but we made it over, Made it over, they wonder why, Through the cold, but we made it over, Made it over, they’ll never know.
Why, why, did we have to come home to war? Why, why, why? Try, try, tell me what are we fighting for? Try, try, try.
Why, why, did we have to come home to war? Why, why why? Try, try tell me what are we fighting for? Try, try, try.
We made it over! We made it over!” YVMCD006; www.yvm.com.au (See also NEW LIGHT NEW HOPE by Gondwana Voices (2003), referenced below in this section.)
ANTARCTICA by Elizabeth Brown (2005)
Elizabeth Brown, a New York (Brooklyn)-based composer and flautist, is a 2007 Guggenheim Fellowship recipient and has composed for various commissions. One of her pieces is Antarctica, a 7-minute alto flute solo with prerecorded sound accompaniment. While it has not been released on CD, Elizabeth provided a recorded copy of her performance of it. The flute seems an ideal instrument to convey ethereal Antarctic impressions and the background instruments, windscapes, breathing and vocalizations provide some great atmospherics. In 2008 Elizabeth provided us with her program notes for her composition: “During the winter of 2004-05, Sara Wheeler’s book Terra Incognita: Travels in Antarctica was my bedtime reading. I started to dream about Antarctica, and this music was born in those dreams. I chose alto flute because of its range and timbre, and the taped portion consists of natural sounds recorded in my Brooklyn studio. Antarctica was commissioned by Patti Monson, who premiered it on July 16th, 2005, at the Bang on a Can Summer Institute at Mass MoCA.” www.elizabethbrowncomposer.com
MARCH OF THE PENGUINS Original Score by Alex Wurman (2005)
Whether a cynical marketing ploy or a desire for cultural adaptation, the English version of this French film has serious narration by Morgan Freeman and a studio orchestra playing a pleasant New Age soundtrack by composer Wurman. There are titles such as The Harshest Place on Earth (played on not so harsh-sounding harps, flutes and tinkling piano), and other musical excursions such as Walk Not Alone, The March, Walk Through Darkness, First Steps and Arrival at the Sea. The soundtrack sounds great with the film but as a self-contained listening experience is a bit too sweet to convey convincingly the harsh Antarctic home of the Emperor penguins. The film became a huge hit, particularly for a documentary and the English version won the Oscar for best documentary feature film of 2005. Milan M2-36131; www.marchofthepenguins.com; (See also LA MARCHE DE L’EMPEREUR by Emilie Simon (2005) in the following “Non-Classical, all or significantly Antarctic” commentary.)
AMSTERDAM – Brass Band Music of the Netherlands (2005)
This CD of tracks from various composers, played by the accomplished Provinciale Brassband Groningen, conducted by Siemen Hoekstra, includes Antarctica, by Carl Wittrock, a Dutch composer and conductor (b. 1966). The liner notes explain that “Carl Wittrock became inspired by huge ice fields surrounding the south pole. Colorful and majestic sounds provide the composition with a fascinating view of this “6th” continent. This composition is a free impression of the spectacular scenery in the Antarctic. Melodies are linked together to convey the various aspects of the landscape. These melodies together with their simple harmonic accompaniments make this work pleasant for both the listener and the musician.” Carl told us in 2007 that “The main reason was the impressive nature. It is very beautiful, but also untouchable and dangerous. The composition was made as a sort of movie music without movie.” Gobelin Records 05.002; www.gobelinmusic.com
INTRODUCING THE FANFARE BAND - Fanfarekorps Koninklijke Landmacht (2003)
The same piece of music, Antarctica, by Carl Wittrock, is also on this Dutch compilation CD of brass band music by the Royal Netherlands Army (FKKL) Fanfare Band, conducted by Jan Nellestijn. Gobelin Records 03.001 & 03.002; www.gobelinmusic.com
ANTARCTICA - Johan Willem Friso Kapel (unknown date)
Carl Wittrock’s Antarctica, also appeared on another brass band compilation disc of the same name, now discontinued, conducted by Gert Jansen. CD not verified.
THE HAROUN SONGBOOK - CHARLES WUORINEN SERIES by Charles Wuorinen (2004)
This is a collection of excerpts from Wuorinen’s opera Haroun and the Sea of Stories, which is based on author Salman Rushdie’s 1990 children’s book of the same name. Rushdie wrote the book as a fable and allegory after the well publicized fatwa that led to his life of escape underground. The story revolves around a professional story teller who loses his gift of gab. His son then goes on adventures to return his father’s livelihood. The music on the CD, for four singers (soprano, mezzo-soprano, tenor and bass-baritone) and piano accompaniment, was written by Charles Wuorinen, an acclaimed modernist composer, pianist and conductor who was the youngest composer to win the Pulitzer Prize in music in 1970. The lyrics are by English poet and journalist James Fenton. One of the adventures is a polar trip with the short track To the South Pole. Sample lyrics: “It’s getting even colder And the waters are losing their colour. We’re going the right way! We can tell! Before it was filthy! Now it’s Hell!...You can stop a cheque. You can stop a leak or three. You can stop traffic, but You can’t stop me. To the South Pole. Full speed ahead to the South Pole…To the South Pole…These are the waters of neglect. These are the seas of disgrace. Give me a year and I expect I could clean this place.” Albany Records TROY664; www.charleswuorinen.com
MIRRORS OF FIRE - Australian Guitar Originals - Played by Tim Kain (2004)
Australian Kain, together with the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, perform (in 1997) Nigel Westlake’s Antarctica - Suite for Guitar and Orchestra, a 22-minute guitar concerto completed in 1992 that had its origin from his soundtrack to the IMAX film of the same name. In four movements, it reworks musical ideas from the film as well as developing others not included in it. Tall Poppies TP169; www.tallpoppies.net
The same recording of Antarctica - Suite for Guitar and Orchestra, with Tim Kain, is included in OUT OF THE BLUE (2004), a compilation of three works by Westlake, performed by the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, conducted by David Porcelijn. ABC Classics ABC 462 017-2; www.rimshot.com.au
MUSIC FROM SEVEN CONTINENTS Vol. 2 by the Cincinnati Boychoir (2004)
Founded in 1965, the Cincinnati Boychoir, directed by Randall Wolfe, gives numerous local subscription concerts and has performed with the Vienna Boys Choir, symphony orchestras, and gives concerts for community organizations as well as touring internationally. The CD includes four lively song tracks about the seventh continent, Antarctica, Penguins, Exploring and Memories. Texts were by Bill Manhire (a New Zealand university professor and poet), from the Book of Job and from the writings of Antarctic explorers Apsley Cherry-Garrard and Ernest Shackleton, with music composed by Carlton Young, an American professor, editor and composer of sacred music. Mr. Young told us that “I've been fascinated with the subject since childhood, e.g., the explorations of Richard Byrd. My recent interest in Antarctic explorers and explorations began in 1999 with my visit to the Antarctic Museum in Christchurch, New Zealand. Cincinnati Boychoir programs had featured six of the continents, but not Antarctica. I agreed to compose a setting, and Mr. Randall Wolfe, Choir Director, suggested some texts, which I supplemented with my own research online and in the standard bibliography, particularly the biographies.” www.cincinnatiboychoir.org
NEW LIGHT NEW HOPE by Gondwana Voices (2003)
Gondwana Voices is Australia’s national children’s choir, for ages 10 to 16, established in 1997 by artistic director/conductor Lyn Williams to perform new and traditional music, which showcases the country and its peoples. It has traveled internationally and is committed to commissioning works from Australian composers. One of the tracks on this disc is the 5? minute Shackleton, a very moving, beautiful song by the Sydney, Australia composer and performer Paul Jarman. The performance by choir and piano is especially enriched by the accompaniment of a string section. The piece is from his song cycle Turn on the Open Sea, which pays tribute to the adventurers of the sea. It was commissioned for the Sydney Children’s Choir in 2001. It is a bittersweet tale of the survival Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Endurance Expedition’s Antarctic expeditioners and their return to a world still at war. On this disc, the conductor is also Mark O’Leary, who is the founder and director of another Australian children’s choir, Young Voices of Melbourne, which performed the same piece on one of their CDs. Australian Broadcasting Corporation ABC 472 822-2; www.gondwanavoices.com.au (See also JOURNEYS by Young Voices of Melbourne (2005), referenced above in this section.)
ANTARCTICA - NHK Television 50th Anniversary Nankyoku Project (2003)
NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation), Japan’s sole public broadcaster, commemorated the 50th anniversary of TV broadcasting in Japan in 2003 by establishing an HDTV broadcasting station in Antarctica in 2003. Located at Syowa Station, Japan’s base, this was Antarctica’s first such station and the first time a film crew stayed there for more than a year. 153 live programs were made, including the showing of a solar eclipse, distributed to the Discovery Channel in North America, auroras and natural scenery. The commemorative CD (Japan Version) contains some very melodic orchestral tracks, accompanied by various exotic Oriental musical instruments plus a jazzy solo guitar track, conducted by Yoko Matsuo. Titles include Horizon, White Wind, Dry Valleys, Silence and Dawn. As we haven’t seen the TV programs, it’s not easy to relate the very pastoral-sounding CD music by itself to the Antarctic, without the visuals. Toshiba-EMI Ltd. Eastworld TOCT-25014
ICESCAPE FOR ORCHESTRA by Chris Cree Brown (2002)
Chris Cree Brown is the Director (Academic) of the School of Music and Senior Lecturer at University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand, as well as the composer of a variety of music. The 16-minute work resulted from a trip to Antarctica in 1999, supported by the Artists to Antarctica programme of the New Zealand Antarctic Institute (Antarctica New Zealand). His first work produced under this programme was UNDER EREBUS (2000), a 15 minute electroacoustic piece, that according to the liner notes was an “attempt to create an expressive work of ‘sonic art’ that reflects my personal interpretation of the environment of Antarctica and my experiences there.” The range of sounds includes walking on snow, skuas, radio communications, wind, seals, penguins and a whiteout. Other Antarctic compositions by Chris include Circulus Antarcticus, a dance commission with Bronwyn Judge, a choreographer who went down to The Ice as part of the 2000 Artists to Antarctica programme and Antarctic Heart, music to go with a video by the sculptor Virginia King, who was the other artist to travel to Antarctica in 1999 under the Artists to Antarctica programme. www.music.canterbury.ac.nz/CCBrownlink/chrispers.htm
MUSIC FOR THE SCOTIA CENTENARY (2002)
The 1902 Scottish National Antarctic Expedition under William Bruce was a successful, but today under heralded, two-year voyage of discovery during which Coats Land, along the Weddell Sea, was discovered. The expedition was also the first to use a motion picture camera in Antarctica as well as the first to document the use of bagpipes to serenade emperor penguins (by Gilbert Kerr). To celebrate the centenary of this expedition, The Royal Scottish Geographical Society, The Royal Scottish Country Dance Society, the National Youth Orchestra of Scotland, B.B.C. Enterprises and piper Ian MacInnes collaborated to produce this CD.
The first half of the disc consists of seven traditional Scottish country dance tunes with titles such as Antarctica Bound, The Ice Cap, The Piper and the Penguin played by Neil Barron and his Scottish Dance Band. The main event, however, is a 24-minute orchestral suite, South, by Dundee composer Gordon McPherson, played by the National Youth Orchestra of Scotland, conducted by Nicolae Moldoveanu. It was commissioned by the orchestra, the Royal Scottish Geographical Society and supported by the Scottish Arts Council and has now been performed internationally. From an appropriately windy opening through some jangly, icy dissonances, this performance can take a proud place amongst the very few recorded orchestral pieces that have attempted to portray the moody, icy seventh continent. RSCDS CD032; www.rsgs.org
THE SONGS of the ‘MORNING’: a Musical Sketch by G. S. Doorly (2002)
The Morning was the relief ship sent to resupply Robert Scott’s Discovery Expedition of 1901-04. During the Morning’s 1902 voyage to Antarctica, the third officer, Lieut. Gerald Doorly, a talented pianist and entertainer, and the chief engineer, J.D. Morrison, as lyricist, collaborated on a collection of songs that were performed during musical evenings on the ship’s piano, accompanied by riotous noisemaking. More in the vein of Victorian parlour songs than sea shanties, the songs were published in 1943, apparently in a very tame version of the originals.
The present hearty and robust recording was undertaken as a Discovery centennial project and the Chorus contains all the adult male descendants of Gerald Doorly, along with professional colleagues and interested friends. The CD booklet includes the lyrics and words of the spoken passages between songs. All royalties from the sale are to be divided between the Dundee Heritage Trust and the New Zealand Antarctic Heritage Trust for their work on the original Expedition’s historic artefacts. Reardon Publishing; www.reardon.co.uk
INTO UNCHARTED SEAS by John Hearne (2001)
John Hearne, a British composer/singer/conductor based in Scotland, was commissioned by Dundee Orchestral Society to write an overture to commemorate the centenary of the launching in Dundee of Robert Scott’s Antarctic ship RRS Discovery in 1901. The ship itself has been preserved in Dundee, whose Symphony Orchestra premièred the 13-minute piece in 2001. It is a dramatic and undulating score, portraying the rough and tumble of the seas the ship must have sailed through in its long voyages. Although the piece has not apparently been released commercially on CD, we are grateful to John Hearne and Scottish Music Centre for making it available to us. www.scottishmusiccentre.com
SEA STAR by Martin Kiszko (music) and Anne Ridler (words) 2001
Martin Kiszko, of Polish-British origin, is a Bristol, UK-based composer who has orchestrated scores for over 200 films and TV productions, including works for the BBC and ITV. Anne Ridler (1912-2001) was an editor and librettist, considered to be Britain’s leading female poet. Sea Star is a 27-minute choral-orchestral work, performed by the Spiritual Sounds Festival Orchestra & Choir at Clifton Cathedral (Bristol) and conducted by David Ogden.
The composer-orchestrator, Martin Kiszko, told us: “The cantata was inspired by an Antarctic voyage I made in 2001 as well as from the desire to write a work about humankind’s journey from the sea to space.” While the words were completed first, the score remained incomplete for several years and the liner notes explain that “A turning point for the musical birth of Sea Star came in 2001 when I visited Antarctica. For the first time many of the images that Anne had created in the poem were experienced first hand: ice covered worlds, floes and hummocks, the stillness or energy of the sea, the vast sky; the slow bubbling of ice thawing and cracking or the sound of ice shelves calving into the sea causing waves to break against the shore. Sea Star’s first tutti orchestral chord, followed by the ebb and flow of gentle strings represent the first beats heard and the aftermath of such a calving in the Antarctic panorama. Other sections of the score aim to emulate the pattern of the landscape – the textures of snow and ice, the sky and changing light – these images assisted the interpretation of the text. Sea Star is a journey of even greater proportions than my Antarctic expedition. It travels from the depths of the oceans with its nascent aquatic life-forms, through land and sky to the far reaches of space where other waterworlds exist in the icecaps of Mars and ice-belts of Saturn. As the characters in the text ascend these levels, it is as if they are on a quest to understand their destiny.”
Anne Ridler’s text for the icy, Antarctic-influenced section of the cantata, subtitled The Earth, follows:
“But while ice covers your world, You do not wake. Cowled in darkness, Uttermost depth of sleep. Ice built of water – water built into solids, Condensed to crystal, unique in all the moving worlds, Yet cousin to other constellations: Ice moons, ice planets, plunging comets. You do not wake…Cowled in darkness, Uttermost depth of sleep. On the surface, a dazzling whiteness; Journeying inward, multiple rings of ice terrains; Floes and hummocks, pinnacles, bastions, Fractured and folded.”
Martin’s web site also mentions that during his 2001 Antarctic trip, he “composed, performed and claimed a world first by for a spoof Antarctic National Anthem (someone had to do it!)” As to a recording of it, Martin advised us that “As for the Antarctic National Anthem – this is a spoof piece recorded in Antarctica on video and not available I’m afraid.” HOXA HS 2052-LE; www.martinkiszko.com
SHACKLETON’S ANTARCTIC ADVENTURE – Original Giant Motion Picture Soundtrack Composed by Sam Cardon (2001)
Cardon is an American Emmy award-winning composer, who also worked on a 2002 Winter Olympics project. The IMAX film’s superb opening iceberg panorama is not to be missed, and the juxtaposition of historic photos of the Endurance Expedition with the present-day recreation flows seamlessly throughout this first-class film. The film score, played by the Northwest Sinfonia, conducted by Kurt Bestor, provides a variety of music: majestic orchestral themes, marching band music, melancholic Celtic pipes, fiddles, banjos and a Hovhanessque horn solo, reflective of the era and the activities the music portrays. Musical tracks include, among others, Wintering in the Pack, Hope and Survival, Into the Unknown/A Stern Night, A Grim Landfall and On to South Georgia. A more informative liner/booklet with notes about the music, the Endurance and filming expeditions would have been a welcome inclusion with the CD. WGBH Music (BMI)/ White Mountain Films Music JR74222
SHACKLETON – Original Score by Adrian Johnston (2001)
This was a two-part four-hour TV dramatization of Shackleton’s Endurance Expedition, directed by Charles Sturridge and featuring the prominent British actor Kenneth Branagh in the title role. Although said to be thoroughly researched, the film received some criticism for spending too long on the pre-Expedition details and not nearly enough time on The Ice, Elephant Island, South Georgia or the final rescue. The attractive orchestral sound track by British composer Johnston is performed on CD by the Philharmonia Orchestra, conducted by Terry Davies. Track titles portray scenes such as Sighting Ice, Locked in the Ice, Antarctic Night, Five Miles a Day, Sighting Land and Cracking Ice. Channel 4 Music C4M00172
SIR PETER MAXWELL DAVIES
Of special interest to classicists, the British Antarctic Survey and the London Philharmonia Orchestra commissioned prolific British composer Sir Peter Maxwell Davies to compose an Antarctic Symphony, his 8th Symphony, for its première in May 2001. In 1997-98 Sir Peter spent three weeks at Britain’s Rothera Base on the Antarctic Peninsula experiencing life there. The BAS said, “Through this commission we hope to raise awareness of Antarctica as a unique scientific laboratory among people whose interests normally lie within the Arts. In turn we at BAS very much look forward to learning more about the world of serious music.” Sir Peter’s eloquent Antarctic diary is available at his web site and a CD recording and/or downloading of the symphony is also available at www.maxopus.com. The 41-minute recording by the Bremen Philharmonic Orchestra in 2003 provides a range of sounds from dissonances to melodic passages, reflecting the composer’s impressions and observations of his trip.
A stylistically similar companion piece, the 21-minute High on the Slopes of Terror, was composed in 1999 for the National Association of Youth Orchestras and was the first musical work resulting from Sir Peter’s Antarctic trip. The title refers to the extinct volcano on Ross Island near McMurdo Sound, Mt. Terror and the virtuoso work was recorded in 2001 by the UK’s Chetham’s Symphony Orchestra, the youth orchestra of Chetham’s School of Music. This piece is also available for download or on CD from Sir Peter’s web site at www.maxopus.com (site unavailable at this revision date).
LULIE the ICEBERG - Music by Jeffrey Stock, Story by Her Imperial Highness Princess Hisako of Takamado of Japan (1999)
Based on the Princess’ children’s book, written after she saw a lone iceberg drifting off Greenland, the “magical tale centers around a quest for the origins and destiny of life as seen through the eyes of an innocent and very brave iceberg, Lulie, as he embarks on a courageous ocean journey between the Arctic and the Antarctic, the two oldest living continents on the planet”. One of the movements is entitled South Pole.
Recorded at Carnegie Hall, the performance is narrated by Sam Waterston and the musicians include the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Betty Baisch's Choral Associates, Yo-Yo Ma (cello), Pamela Frank (violin) and Paul Winter (saxophone).
This CD is hard to miss with the colourful iceberg, emperor penguins and humpback whales on the cover. Produced in co-operation with UNICEF and Icebridge, a forum of scientists and educators dedicated to the promotion of knowledge about the polar regions and the oceans. Sony Classical SK 61665
ON THE LAST FRONTIER by Einojuhani Rautavaara (1999)
This Finnish classical composer has become well known to North American audiences in recent years, particularly for his haunting 1972 Cantus Arcticus, an ode to the land of the Arctic Circle. On the Last Frontier (A Fantasy for Chorus and Orchestra, 1997) is based on the composer's interest, going back to childhood, in Edgar Allan Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym. Published in 1837, this novella about Pym and a group of sailors marooned on a tropical island at the South Pole with a race of savages is considered to be seminal in Antarctic fiction and has spawned numerous like-minded stories. As Rautavaara approached his 70th year, he took the book's closing plot and developed his own rich musical themes of imagined lands not yet explored. Ondine ODE 921-2
WALKING WITH DINOSAURS - Music from the BBC TV Series - composed by Benjamin Bartlett (1999)
The BBC Concert Orchestra takes us back in time to the Mesozoic era when dinosaurs ruled the land. The soundtrack includes the rather short Spirits of the Ice Forest which “explores the exotic woodland Antarctic - mirrored by a romantic theme tinged with Hispanic harmony” and the peaceful Antarctic Spring. BBC Music 7243 523458 2 3
2000 TODAY - a World Symphony for the Millennium - composed and conducted by Tan Dun (1999)
An international consortium of television broadcasters commissioned this dynamic musical mosaic for a millennium satellite transmission. The music presents a combination of classical western instrumentation including the BBC Concert Orchestra, choirs, soloists, world instruments and chants “to capture the poetic spirit of the world’s regions”. Included is the percussive Antarctica. Sony Classical SK 61529
LUBOMÍR BRABEC PLAYS BACH IN ANTARCTICA by Lubomír Brabec (1997)
The CD title is somewhat misleading as this music was recorded in the Czech Republic; however, the liner notes indicate that classical guitarist Brabec performed these works on his 1997 trip to Antarctica on board a Greenpeace ship and at one of the bases. “Just as Antarctica was unknown, not to mention unvisited, in J. S. Bach’s day, Bach himself was only known to a narrow group of connoisseurs. I think there are certain parallels: the grandeur, monumental beauty and power of Bach’s music, and the mysterious fascination and power of this mystic continent that belongs to no-one and yet everyone. In both these entities, Antarctica and Bach’s oeuvre, we can sense the presence of something transcendent, something that goes beyond us. It was to the greater glory of this principle, God, that Bach wrote this music.”
Brabec may be on to something here, as we await someone to lug a grand piano or bring a brass band to the shores of Antarctica for what might truly be the first professional recording of a musical performance on the continent. Supraphon SU 3338-2 131
FROM AUSTRALIA – John Williams, guitar (1994)
This CD of world première recordings by Australian composers includes Antarctica - Suite for Guitar and Orchestra by Australian Nigel Westlake. Westlake wrote the score for the IMAX film Antarctica and later reworked it into this longer 1992 guitar concerto in four movements. Highlights are the stately Wooden Ships and a shimmering piece called Penguin Ballet, which captures emperor penguins frolicking beneath the ice. Sony Classical SK53 361
ANTARCTIC SYMPHONY – various composers (1993)
This CD is a compilation by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation of existing older, non-Antarctic classical music, interspersed with the actual sounds of Antarctic wildlife and human activities on The Ice, in an effort to evoke a feeling of Antarctica. The music includes pieces by Vivaldi, Duruflé, Boccherini, Roussel, Sibelius and Nielsen. The non-musical interludes include a kitchen sink of sounds of penguins, seals, petrels, skuas, katabatic winds, huskies, ships moving in ice, helicopters and radio room/flight operation conversations.
According to the liner notes, “Antarctica is a wilderness most people have some idea of, though very few have been there. Perhaps Australians are more aware; Antarctica is closer to us, though still very inaccessible. We have a national responsibility for part of it, and ‘part’ is a very large area indeed. Many of us will know someone who has been there, maybe even someone whose life was changed by spending time there. The race to the South Pole, lost to Amundsen by Scott and his party, the drawn out suffering and human loss as they tried to return – these are among the Australian epics, tales to children and remembered by adults.
The makers of this record haven’t visited Antarctica, though they received the sound recordings from people who have. For us, the sound effects were the introduction to the Antarctic world. As on the previous discs in this series, the idea is to appeal to the aural imagination, stimulating it with music and natural sounds, together and side by side.
The first paradox we found was that Antarctica seemed to demand the inclusion of some human sounds. In our other wildernesses, bush and sea, music provided the humanising element. In ANTARCTIC SYMPHONY there are even more bird and animal presences than in Sea Symphony, but the sounds captured on tape constantly remind the listener that any human presence is a struggle against the elements. We have introduced human voices for the first time, so that we can wonder that people are there at all.
“Symphony” mainly implies music from the European tradition. The sounds, rather than the music in this series, evoke the landscape, but it is no accident that music which can live with Antarctica was composed close to the northern, Arctic wastes…
Paradox No. 2: the trackless wastes of ice and snow seemed to call for a wider, not a narrower range of music and musical emotions. A strange environment, so that strange music is not out of place, like Boccherini’s startling eighteenth century phantasms of a Spanish city by night. Humour, from the dogs and their bluff handlers, releases an energy and directness typical of the music of Roussel, the ship’s officer turned composer. The seasons in Antarctica, we imagine, could hardly be like those of Vivaldi’s Venice, but his music, matching a poem describing an icy winter scene, seems right as our soundscape approaches the great southernmost continent…” ABC Music/Phonogram/Polygram 514 639-2
ANTARCTICA - The Film Music, composed by Nigel Westlake (1992)
The 37-minute CD of the score of the IMAX film Antarctica has thirteen mostly short orchestral tracks of various themes portrayed in the movie, four of which were developed into the previously mentioned guitar concerto. The CD is well played and recorded and the music, conducted by Carl Vine, conveys the dramatics of its theme titles. Tall Poppies TP012; www.tallpoppies.net; www.rimshot.com.au
TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH - Original Soundtrack Recording - music composed and conducted by John Scott (1988)
This is the soundtrack for the William Kronick-produced, written and directed documentary film about The Transglobe Expedition, led by Ranulph Fiennes. Over a three-year period ending in 1982, the team circumnavigated the globe along its polar axis from North to South Poles, being the first to do so. The orchestral music is a pleasant listening journey and the Antarctic tracks include the titles Shackleton, Reaching Antarctica, On to the South Pole and The Scott Tragedy. Prometheus PCD102
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