Having warmly received a previous Peter Sculthorpe compilation from ABC Classics back in November 1995, I can bestow an equally enthusiastic welcome on this generously full new collection from the same company featuring the excellent Australian Chamber Orchestra. At the risk of repeating myself, Sculthorpe’s music once again impresses with its personable character, uncompromising integrity and striking sense of local colour (which itself stems from the composer’s rapt absorption in Australia’s indigenous landscape and wildlife).
Perhaps the most striking composition on the new anthology is Port Essington (1977), whose genesis goes back to a score for a 1974 television film (scripted by Thomas Keneally) describing the Victorian settlers’ attempt to establish a military base at Essington on the Cobourg Peninsula on the Northern coast of Australia (an undertaking scuppered by their refusal to adapt to the inhospitable surroundings). As Sculthorpe himself explains: “The music exists on two planes: the string orchestra represents the Bush; and a string trio, playing what appears to be 19th-century salon music, represents the Settlement”. Based around an Aboriginal chant heard at the very outset, it is an imaginative, deeply rewarding creation. Genuinely touching, too. Towards the end, in the section marked “Arietta: Farewell”, string orchestra and trio sweetly commune as if in reconciliation. Yet, as annotator Graeme Skinner perceptively observes: “The irony of this gesture – the apparent victor briefly identifying with the apparent vanquished – is made doubly poignant by the fact that the trio’s own tune is nothing more than a ‘period’ bowdlerisation of the Aboriginal theme”.
Indeed, a similar duality between the New World and the Old informs the First Sonata for Strings. Based on Sculthorpe’s Tenth Quartet of 1983 (which was originally written for the Kronos Quartet), its two framing “Sun Song” movements and central “Interlude” utilize ideas and rhythms found in the songs of the native American Pueblo Indians and form a pleasing contrast to the reflective chorales which comprise the second and fourth movements. The Sonatas Nos. 2 and 3 (1988 and 1994) are likewise based on earlier quartet offerings, the Ninth (1975) and Eleventh (1990) respectively (the latter another Kronos commission). Both are entirely characteristic of their creator and contain plenty to enchant and intrigue the listener (No. 3 brings with it echoes of Sculthorpe’s exotic 1988 orchestral essay, Kakadu). Elsewhere, the deeply felt Lament (1976) seems to pick up where the threnodic Irkanda IV left off some 15 years previously.
Comparative listening with this same group’s Southern Cross release containing four of the six items here reveals perhaps fractionally greater bite and concentration in those 1983 accounts. (Some may also prefer the tighter focus of that earlier production.) Otherwise, absolutely no grumbles. Strongly recommended.'