Classical music: I am going to be beside myself

Ross Harris' Requiem for the Fallen features the sound of taonga puoro. Photo / Gareth Watkins/Lilburn Trust

Wellington composer Ross Harris is almost an honorary Aucklander, with five of his symphonies commissioned and premiered by the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra.

Not so with his new Requiem for the Fallen, which is the Wellington Arts Festival's major New Zealand music commission.

Receiving its first performance on the last day of the month, it draws together the talents of Voices New Zealand Chamber Choir and the New Zealand String Quartet, with Horomona Horo on taonga puoro, traditional Maori musical instruments.

The concert opens with shorter pieces by Purcell, Messiaen, Beethoven and Schnittke. Harris likes the fact that his new work will be set in a historical context but, a little nervous, the composer admits he is "going to be beside myself while those pieces unfold at their leisure".

Like Britten's War Requiem, Harris' new score mixes Latin liturgical text and other poetry - in this case that of Vincent O'Sullivan - and he thinks that "putting them together has produced an extra dimension of power".

O'Sullivan has been a collaborator on 13 major works, including his award-winning Symphony No 2 which, like Requiem for the Fallen, takes the tragedy of World War I as its subject. "Vincent writes his words specifically for musical settings and knows just what works for me," Harris says. "We have a lot of fun educating each other as we go and I feel lucky to have struck up this long-term relationship."

At the instigation of conductor Karen Grylls and others, Requiem for the Fallen will have a theatrical presentation with a staging by Jonathan Alver that has tenor soloist Richard Greager "symbolising what Vincent calls an old cobber".

"Jonathan told me he could hear something else in the piece when I gave it to him," Harris adds. "He saw the tenor as an older person and felt there should be this character of an old soldier. I thought that was pretty exciting."

Harris has also enjoyed working with Horomona Horo and his taonga puoro, pointing out he had been aware of this soundworld for some decades since trying to incorporate koauau, a ductless and notchless small flute, into his 1984 opera Waituhi. "It didn't happen. The flute player couldn't manage the different embouchure."

Near the beginning of Requiem for the Fallen, Horo's koauau weaves around Rolf Gjelsten's cello harmonics in what Harris describes as an ethereal duet.

Although there will be more "rowdy and raucous" sounds when Horo picks up the pukaea, a wooden trumpet, for the Dies Irae, much of what he will do is more subdued in tone.

"Horo's contributions add a spiritual dimension. Jonathan sees this as a kind of New Zealand thing, almost as if Horo is portraying the distant sound of our land."

Harris values the way in which Horo has been "very imaginative about how the piece should be, working beyond what I had been thinking of when composing it".

"He creates a kind of parallel universe. It's a little like a painting that's got another layer lightly spread across it," he says.

The four members of the New Zealand String Quartet are old friends, having played five of Harris' full-length quartets as well as shorter compositions.

"They'll do anything I say," Harris laughs, "although I did have an interesting battle over my very difficult Fifth String Quartet. They played it beautifully in the end but there was a lot of kicking and rumbling - only possible because it was written by 'Ross just down the road'."

Musicians aside, there is one other factor in this upcoming concert that is special to Ross Harris - the venue, Wellington's Anglican Cathedral of St Paul.

"It's got a huge long reverb," he explains. "You make a noise and it kind of hangs there, which will be perfect for the reflective nature of the piece and the light scoring."