Album Review: Lilburn, Violin and Piano Works

Douglas Lilburn - violin and piano works. Photo / Supplied

The cover of Atoll's new collection of Lilburn's music for violin and piano catches the eye with Chuck Joseph's nostalgic line-up of storybook monarchs.

Elizabeth Holowell and Dean Sky-Lucas' major offering, the 1950 Sonata, hailed by the late John Steele as "one of the finest of modern violin sonatas", receives its first commercial recording.

These musicians are alert to the work's vigorous rhythmic thrust but its essential conflict between the stoic and the sensuous needs more languor in its sinuous lines.

An earlier 1943 Sonata shows Lilburn struggling to create an individual voice; so does Holowell at times, with thin tone and unconvincing double-stopping.

In 1989 Lilburn recorded the verses for his 1952 Salutes to Seven Poets, paying personal tribute to old friends such as Denis Glover and Allen Curnow. An award-winning Radio New Zealand production, this was issued onCD by Waiteata Music Press in 2006.

Five years on, Cameron Rhodes' actorly renditions do not eradicate memories of the composer's characteristically terse weighing of words.

Holowell and Sky-Lucas are at their most persuasive here, whether lilting in an allegro commodo or exploring a later Arioso in which a Schubertian spirit is subsumed by Antipodean darkness.

The 1944 incidental music for Othello is lighter fare, Rhodes' orations punctuating fanfares and other miniatures including Lilburn's popular Willow Song, done sweetly.

This release offers an invaluable opportunity to bring Lilburn's music to a wider New Zealand public and yet its liner notes prove a major disappointment.

Even allowing for gaffes, like the creation of an eighth poet by listing Fairburn as both A. Rex andD. Fairburn, why do dry discussions of "registral expansion" take precedence over more human issues of how and why this music came to be?

What of Maurice Clare's role in drawing Lilburn to the violin in the 1940s, or the coaxing of the 74-year-old reclusive composer to record his Salutes? And what could be more significant than R.A.K. Mason's bitter Song of Allegiance, from the same work, returning, more starkly set for baritone and viola in 1958? Within a few years Lilburn would be retreating into his electronic studio.

Lilburn, Violin and Piano Works
(Atoll, through Ode Records)

Stars: 3/5

Verdict: "Significant Lilburn music finally makes it to CD, but the whole story is still to be told."