If you are not familiar
with Richard Mills already, he is one
of the world’s most well known and popular
living composers. Since the 1980s the
Australian has composed works for the
Commonwealth Games in 1982, the Olympic
Games in 2000, and numerous works of
opera and symphonies performed all around
the world. His music has deservedly
found acceptance among the concert-going
public as it tends to be both energetic
and entertaining. This album takes several
of his pieces presented exactly as the
composer intended them. He is, after
all, either the conductor or featured
performer in each case.
The first, Aeolian
Caprices is a vibrant work based
on the Aeolian (natural minor) mode.
It is an exhilarating work, showcasing
the oversimplification of basic music
theory that "minor keys are sad
sounding". This is a work of pure
joy, echoing to the more energetic parts
of Stravinsky’s Firebird. Though
very short, it is bursting with energy.
While there is little new ground broken
here, it is thoroughly enjoyable in
the tradition of the neo-Romantics.
The second work, Soundscapes
is a four movement piece featuring Mills
on a variety of percussion instruments.
Here his compositional innovations become
more evident. There is a blending of
the work of Steve Reich and of Rimsky-Korsakov
or the young Stravinsky. The orchestra
is used less as a means of conveying
melodic ideas and more as a complex
tonal-percussion instrument, similar
to the way that Stravinsky uses the
symphony in Rite of Spring. The
departure is in his percussion instrumentation,
including whistles, bird-calls, extensive
use in the third movement of the vibraphone
suggesting a mysterious nocturnal setting,
or of pitched drums, tom-toms and large
cowbells in the second and fourth movements.
The piece, as it traverses movements,
showcases a diversity of symphonic percussion
that is otherwise seldom encountered.
If you haven’t heard this work be assured
that it is well worth your time and
effort. It was apparently performed
live, unlike the other pieces presented
here. There is a great deal of applause
at the end of the piece; the other works
end in silence.
Seaside Dances
is a six movement interpretation of
a poem by e.e. cummings. The musical
vocabulary seems to have been derived
from the works of Claude Debussy. The
first movement is a wistful look over
the horizon with the different string
sections exchanging the melody in often
very complex tetrachords. It makes extensive
use of bitriatic harmonies for support,
lending a feeling similar to Charles
Ives’ Unanswered Question, though
certainly less avant-garde. The second
movement suddenly shifts to a scene
of childish playfulness. The harmonies
are simple, the meter much more easily
defined and steady, and the music takes
on the nature of incidental music from
the 1950s. The third and fourth movements
immediately move to a more complex and
beautiful musical language, reminiscent
this time of Copland, as in the slower
movements of Appalachian Spring.
In the next, there is again an energetic
vigor, though this time with a darker
complexity in the harmonies. The innocent
simplicity of the second movement is
seemingly lost, though the youthful
liveliness remains. The finale returns
to the spiritual and pensive tones and
complex harmonizations of the initial
movement, returning us to where we began.
The final work is Fantastic
Pantomimes, written for selected
principals from the Melbourne Symphony
Orchestra. The musicians are intended
to constitute characters in a musical
pantomime, with the Kabuki Theater as
an inspiration. The featured wind players
are required to be spatially removed
from each other and the orchestra, placed
around the orchestra hall during the
performance. Again Mills makes distinctive
use of percussion, here deriving much
of his metric shifting and percussion
voicing from traditional Japanese drum
music. The work is divided into two
sections, the first being a rapid series
of thematic "punctuation points",
the second being a slow chorale for
strings interspersed with melodic material
from the first seven minutes.
There are points where
the music of Mills seems very contrived.
Although he has a wide variety of influences,
I rarely found myself truly stimulated
by this album. He seems to find his
voice largely through those who came
before him. On the other hand, this
is no different than the complaint that
one hears when jazz fans compare Wynton
Marsalis to Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie,
or rock fans compare Eddie Van Halen
to Jimi Hendrix. There is no doubt that
the earlier musicians are more innovative,
as they are truly inventing musical
vocabularies. There is little argument
that the later musicians are superior
technically, as they are able to perfect
techniques that the innovators discovered.
Similarly Mills has been given a legacy
that he is in many ways perfecting.
While it must be said that the sounds
of his music are often derivative, Mills’
music is quite good and never tedious.
It is hard to fault someone for showing
their influences, especially when they
have evidently attempted to find so
many of them.
The liner notes also
are quite good, as they contain both
a musicological examination of Mills’
career to date and a collection of notes
by Mills about the pieces. The notes
of what lines from the poem are employed
at various points of Seaside Dances
do a commendable job of elucidating
the work. They also explain visual portions
of the Soundscapes that are impossible
to convey through a purely audio medium,
and the reasons for the unconventional
instrumentation in Fantastic Pantomimes.
I wish that this disc had been made
available in 5.1 surround sound for
the last work, where it would have better
emulated the desired musical experience.
That does not detract from the performance
however, which was perhaps the best
on this album.
If you are someone
that is interested in the future of
symphonic music, the music of Richard
Mills is certainly one place that should
be explored. This album is well recorded
and produced. The music is convincingly
composed and performed. This is the
type of new music that most concert-attendees
would be likely to enjoy and Mills is
among the better popular composers in
the world today. If you have not yet
experienced his music, this is probably
as good a place as any to start.
Patrick Gary
see also review
by Gary Higginson
Gerhard Mallon, flute 
