BY STEPHANIE ESLAKE
“You can’t come to a new music concert with your ‘Mozart ears’ on,” according to Timothy Phillips.
The Melbourne muso and conductor founded the Arcko Symphonic Ensemble in 2008 with a vision of bringing rarely performed works to Australian audiences, and this month celebrates Nigel Butterley’s 80th birthday with concert ‘From Sorrowing Earth’ dedicated to his works.
The creation of a group such as Arcko begs the question – why do we even need an initiative focusing on new work? If you look at most concert programs from smaller ensembles to larger orchestras, you’ll be sure to find your answer in the Mozart, Tchaikovsky and Brahms works dominating many a performance. Though centuries older, these familiar composers still leave their permanent marks on our ears – perhaps closing our minds to the idea that some new music could be just as good, if not better than that which we’ve heard so many times before.
Timothy argues there are a few reasons why our modern concert programs are often anything but modern – or Australian.
“Particularly in Australia, a lot of the orchestras have directors of artistic planning who are not Australian, so they’re even less likely to have heard someone like Butterley,” he says.
“I think that they underestimate the audience’s intelligence and preparedness to engage with new works. I’m not necessarily proposing that all orchestras should be playing music of the 20th and 21st centuries, but there seems to be very little attempt to incorporate a bit. It’s a money game, unfortunately.”
Incorporating new works in a concert is a good start – but once every now and again doesn’t quite cut it.
“Part of the problem with new music is that it’s not a matter of ‘do I understand it or don’t I?’, it’s a matter of familiarity. Orchestras aren’t getting the chance to become familiar with the sounds and themes of new music. The orchestras ultimately are doing themselves a big disservice.”
That’s where Arcko comes in, and it doesn’t play safe. Founded in 2008, Timothy made it “part of the mission” to explore new music such as Butterley’s. The connection between the two men goes back a few years – Nigel had worked at the ABC with a cousin of Timothy’s mother and “he’s always been this name of a composer that I’ve known of”.
Timothy says new music like Butterley’s should be performed live with a visual experience that CDs “can’t do justice”.
“People have learnt the way you need to listen to new music.”
And that means, don’t put on those Mozart ears and “expect to hear the things you would at a Mozart concert”.
“Then, you may learn to appreciate it and maybe to some degree understand it.”
Butterley’s ‘In the Head, the Fire’ will be performed at this concert – and Timothy says it hasn’t been played for decades.
“It’s half an hour of not-very-typical work. Radio stations these days seem averse to playing longer form works – why the symphony orchestras haven’t played this is for reasons I can’t really explain.
“Nigel has never really been picked up by the orchestras in the way I believe he should have. When the orchestras and ABC parted company, there was not this drive from the ABC concert department to program Australian music.”
The focus of the concert is ‘From Sorrowing Earth’, to which Timothy was attracted by its title. The work had been on Timothy’s mind for years, but when Nigel came on board as Arcko’s patron more than two years ago and they decided to run an 80th birthday concert, the timing for its performance was perfect.
The composer wrote the work in 1991 and revised some woodwind bars in 2002. Though Timothy describes the work as “harmonically challenging in places because he often straddles various keys and doesn’t have one tonal centre,” he doesn’t consider it inaccessible to listeners.
“I personally don’t like the term accessible – I think that’s a temptation for composers to write in a particular way.”
This work is “not rhythmically as challenging, he doesn’t use extended techniques and he doesn’t go beyond quintuplets in terms of complexity and his time signatures are pretty standard – lots of 5/4 in this one”.
The concert also sees a new commission by composer Elliot Gyger, who Timothy approached in the absence of Nigel writing a new piece for the concert.
Gyger’s work ‘From Joyous Leaves’ is inspired by Nigel’s work ‘Uttering Joyous Leaves’, which was written in 1981 for a Sydney piano competition.
“It derives a lot of its thematic and harmonic materials from that piano piece and there are a few direct quotes within the new concerto, but it’s a lot of Elliot’s unique treatment,” Timothy says.
“It’s a reflection on Nigel’s life as well as being inspired by one of Nigel’s own pieces – but it’s absolutely in Elliot’s own voice.”
Though the concert celebrates Nigel’s birthday with a musical performance, it also honours his contributions to the broader musical landscape in Australia. A competent pianist as well as composer, Nigel was responsible for the Australian premieres of works by world renowned composers John Cage, Messiaen, and Schoenberg.
“From a performing and programming point of view he had a big impact on Australia,” Timothy says. “Compositionally, ‘In the Head, the Fire’ was one of the first Australian works to win this really big internationally prestigious award and he’s won several awards since.”
“One of the things I look for in composers when programming Arcko concerts is originality, and he straddles several worlds of modernism but it’s a very unique take, even when he’s adopting the serial technique.”
“He adapts it to suit his own purposes. He had years of teaching at the New South Wales conservatorium, where he taught 20th Century chamber music and had a profound influence.”
See ‘From Sorrowing Earth: A symphonic celebration of Australia composer Nigel Butterley’s 80th birthday’ performed by the Arcko Symphonic Ensemble with pianist Zubin Kanga at the Iwaki Auditorium in Southbank, 7.30pm October 31. Free event, book www.trybooking.com. Supported by ABC Classic FM, the Australia Council for the Arts, the Robert Salzer Foundation, and the Australian Cultural Fund.
Image supplied. Credit: Graeme Farr.
