The Australian composer
Brenton Broadstock was born in Melbourne.
Apart from studying at Monash he has
also pursued other musical studies with
Donald Freund (Memphis State) and Peter
Sculthorpe (Sydney). Prizes and commissions
have deservedly come his way. Currently
he is a professor at the Faculty of
Music at Melbourne University. His music
however is most unprofessorly as the
five symphonies in this set issued some
seven years ago amply demonstrate.
Broadstock does not
place elitist obstacles between himself
and the listener. His music speaks direct
from the heart to the heart.
The First Symphony
appropriates its title from Bunyan's
Pilgrim's Progress. It is dedicated
to Broadstock's son, Matthew. It charts
the father's gradual realisation that
Matthew was severely handicapped and
the acceptance but not understanding
of his condition. The music moves through
ecstatic tonal realms related to the
orchestral-pastoral music of Herbert
Howells, through moments of Tippett-like
lyrical aspiration to whoopingly uproarious
tempests to a glowing resolution in
an optimistic B major. Then follows
a return to the long benediction of
the horn writing that opens the work.
This epiphany seems, and should seem,
hard won. Along the way I recognised
Broadstock's anger as a cousin to the
same emotion that explodes in the symphonies
of Malcolm Arnold.
The Second Symphony
is dedicated to fellow Australian
composer Barry Conyngham. This is a
single movement piece of about the same
duration as its predecessor. Here it
is laid out in five tracks. The tense
buzzing writing for strings and brass
recalls the Sibelius Sixth Symphony
but is more volcanically volatile. The
music grumbles and brays in squat rasping
terms. The title is taken from the title
of a collection of Ivor Gurney's letters
and reflects the many aspects of light
in darkness: the parallels with schizophrenia
and the tension in all of us between
the negative and the positive. Forbidding
assaults of sound contrast with the
whispered starry twinkling benediction
we know from the works of Urmis Sisask
and - up to a point - in Valentin Silvestrov.
The blessing in tracks 8 and 9 is transient
though substantial, leaving the listener
with a sense of the positive. The close
(tr. 10) blazes, growls and howls with
much barkingly abrasive work for the
brass and the insistent tattoo of percussion.
This is kinetically exuberant music
which has its own excitement and drama.
It parallels but with a certain roiling
bleakness that of William Schuman at
his most supercharged. If you enjoy
Schuman's Third Symphony and Violin
Concerto you should track this work
down.
The ABC-commissioned
Third Symphony is dedicated to
his parents. It's in two movements each
of which is here allocated two tracks.
The work is a powerful expression of
the feelings produced by watching Second
World War Holocaust footage of Nazi
execution squads murdering Jews. Then
it sings an elegy for the Tasmanian
aborigines who were systematically slaughtered
by the white incomers. Like Broadstock's
other symphonies this cannot escape
the quality of blinding light with which
he imbues the music but neither does
he in any way tone down the barrages
and gunshot impacts. All of these are
stunningly and even forbiddingly caught
by the gripping recording. Even in tempest
the tiers and strata of the music remain
lucid with the effect similar to the
wilder reaches of Ligeti’s Le Grand
Macabre and of Terteryan's eruptions
in his Seventh and Eighth symphonies.
There are a few Penderecki-style wails
too but usually carried by the brass.
The lava slides of the trombones and
horns at the end of the first movement
fleetingly recall Messiaen. The second
movement has some of the elegiac ecstatic
pastoral sense of the First Symphony.
The idiom is the orchestral Howells
of the 1920s and 1930s but with a modern
edge. One soon gets to notice Broadstock
fingerprints after listening to these
symphonies and one of them is the eloquent
oratory given to the brass instruments.
The Third Symphony is a deeply impressive
and moving work.
The Fourth Symphony
is, as the notes by Dr Linda Kouvaras
claim, the most consistently gentle,
transcendental and reflective of these
works. The exalted utopian nobility
of this music recalls the psychedelic
transcendentalism of Valentin Silvestrov's
Fifth Symphony yet Broadstock retains
that lucidity of texture which in the
Russian composer can congeal. The pulse
is steady, slowly singing, evolutionary
carried by confiding Sibelian violins
with lines spun over, above and through
by brass, percussion, harp and woodwind.
The music radiates the air of a yearningly
expressive benediction with the piano
discreetly touching in a timeless pulse
in tr. 2, 1:12 (CD2). That pulse is
inexorable. The golden belling horns
carry the theme to heights of grandeur
and thunderous towering exaltation at
the end of the first movement and at
the start of the very short (2.48) second
movement.
The last work in this
set is the longest: Broadstock's Fifth
Symphony. Again it's in two movements
with each movement, in this case, in
four tracks. The title comes from Mark
Twain who wrote that "everyone is a
moon and has a dark side that he never
shows to anyone". It was commissioned
by Andrew Wheeler and the Krasnoyarsk
orchestra. It is, it seems, the most
autobiographical of his works. Here
it is worth reminding ourselves that
the dark side here referred to does
not connote anything sinister: it is
a reference to our inner self - our
island of existence. The music moves
through many episodes and early on (tr.
4) we encounter the same sense of confiding
quiet eloquence with which the Fourth
Symphony is rife. It quickly rises in
tr. 5 to a superheated eloquence lofted
high by trumpets and the brass choir.
The buzzing Sibelian Luonnotar confidences
of the violins (tr. 6 and later tr.
8 at the start and in the final drawing
of breath in tr. 11) resolve into a
balmy glowing lyricism close to Mahler's
Adagietto but purer and without
that layer of sentimental excess. This
is a stunning golden work boiling a
sense of kindly exaltation with a blazing
kinetic forward pulse, hammered and
sprinting.
After hearing what
Wheeler and Broadstock achieved over
nine days of recording sessions with
this otherwise unknown orchestra other
composers should be beating their way
to Krasnoyarsk.
Broadstock is a doughty
orchestrator whose skills are matched
by his roistering volcanic confidence.
This set represents
a magnificent vividly living achievement
which I urge you to hear. Petition your
local orchestra to put on any one of
these symphonies and make the first
one to be tackled the Fourth Symphony.
Rob Barnett
for details
Krasnoyarsk Academic SO/Andrew Wheeler
