SKU: DB.01-00681

ISBN 9790012200284.

Contemporary Classical meets Jazz Grooves.

Theremin's Journey is quite different. True, there is a piano - which plays bluesy, filmic, generally quite unmemorable music - but add in the theremin and pre-recorded electronics and the listener is off on a bizarre jazz meets sci-fi meets film-pop journey. The high-pitched spooky whine of the theremin is unmistakable, and unforgettable in small doses, as here; the work was in fact commissioned by Joanne Pearce Martin, who plays both theremin and piano. This track actually carries a 'health' warning on the cover: Crackles are part of the electronic track and are intentional: the CD is not defective! As it happens, the crackling is not particularly noticeable, and in general the electronics are atmospheric and additive in combination with the theremin. Especially the first and last two or three minutes of the 'journey' are really quite fascinating musically. (musicweb-international.com, May 2011) // Theremin's Journey places that curiously otherworldly instrument and piano in cheeky avant-garde tandem with electronic sonorities...(GRAMOPHONE, August 2011).

SKU: PO.PEL12

ISBN 9781776605521.

This volume contains Lilburn's two piano sonatinas. Sonatina No.1 (1946) combines geometric patterning of classical forms with the distinctive simplicity of colour and line that the composer so admired in the work of the regionalist painters. The first movement hymns a fundamental vitality ‚Äì a fresh start in the morning land that is New Zealand; an almost geological majesty pervades the second movement and a three-note motive sets the finale in motion. Composed in the Autumn of 1962, Sonatina No.2, together with Symphony No.3, provides the fullest expression of Lilburn's last notated music before he turned to the electroacoustic medium. Spare, elegant and eloquent, both the sonatina and the symphony are rich and distinctive works that maintain a tension that keeps them taut as cords in our collective memory. Although the pianists who know the sonatina so well from the inside talk of its subtleties, beauty, delicacy and meaning, it will always be a work of immediate appeal, a work that is as much a delight to listen to as to play, a work that can be enjoyed as pure music.