MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2024
60,000 reviews
... and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             


Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger

REVIEW


Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Chandos recordings
All Chandos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews



all Bridge reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All Eloquence reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

Subscribe to our free weekly review listing

 

 

Availability
CD: Buywell

Andrew SCHULTZ (b. 1960)
Endling op. 72 (2007) [14:58]
Violin Concerto op. 55 (1966) [33:58]
Once upon a time ... (2006) [18:55]
Jennifer Pike (violin)
Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra/Richard Mills
rec. 2-5 Dec 2008, Federation Concert Hall, Hobart, Tasmania. DDD
ABC CLASSICS 476 4519 [67:51]

Experience Classicsonline


I lose count of how many volumes have been issued in ABC's Australian Composer series made in regal partnership with the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra. The number is not small. There have been at least three boxed sets for a start and there is no sign of the flow stemming.
 
Andrew Schultz who already has two chamber music CDs on the superbly interesting Tall Poppies label is the latest to be feted in this way. Schultz's productive energies have primarily been taken up with three major operas: Black River 1998, Going into Shadows 2000 and The Children's Bach 2007. Other large-scale non-theatre works are the cantata Journey to Horseshoe Bend (2003) and The Song of Songs (2004), the latter a reworking of the biblical text by Barry Hill.
 
Andrew Schultz was born in Adelaide and studied with Brumby, Crumb, Lumsdaine and Berio. He attended the universities of Queensland, Pennsylvania and Queen's College London.
 
These three orchestral works are comparatively recent. Endling means the last surviving individual of a species or plant. Schultz's piece specifies two horns, timps and strings. It's a tonal piece, tender and with a tendency to sorrow and introspection. The music is elegiac with fine pastels touched in by the horns and fragile yet at times intense strings. A parallel might be Finzi but more astringent and strange yet not dissonant.
 
Jennifer Pike has recorded the Rozsa Violin Concerto for Chandos as well as some shorter pieces to go with the Cello Concerto. The Schulz Violin Concerto was commissioned by the Hunter Orchestra in Newcastle, Australia but they went into liquidation leaving the score and parts produced and the commission fee paid. It lay unperformed until this recording when, working with Ms Pike, it was revised. The result is in two movements. Like Endling the first movement proceeds at an evolutionary petal-unfolding gait with the violin singing likewise. The music effervesces slowly and the Silvestrov-like carillon bubbling is unhurried. The melody is elegiac and follows the topography of pastoral 1940s Copland. The violin sings that sky-aspiring melody uninhibitedly amid a melos increasingly similar to Arvo Pärt's Cantus. The violin gently continues to soar. The second movement is animated with iterations of bell fanfares from the brass and Hovhaness-like groans before the violin enters with a fast pulse and slippery virtuosity locked into the harmonies of the first movement. This music sounds as if it has evolved from The Lark Ascending until it escapes into display. This is diverting but one cannot help feeling that Schulz's magnetic pull is towards the pensive. So it proves with a final page that glows steadily and in which the solo and orchestral strings whisper into silence.
 
Like the Violin Concerto Once Upon a Time ... was written in Banff, Canada during one of four residencies he has spent there. Northern climes suit Schulz's temperament. This work is heard in its double woodwind version - the original is for triple woodwind. The music is full of colourful imagination evoking unspecified characters and episodes from folk tales and the imagination of childhood. The scenes are as rich as the colourful orchestration. Gawky grotesques, lissom princesses, black horrors and verdant secret valleys float into view. These are peopled through orchestral effects which are rather different from the character of the writing in the first two works on this disc. The music is tonal, open textured, miraculously well orchestrated and rife with solos and chamber dialogue. Effects are shimmeringly vivid and full of awe (12:10). This can be thought of as a modern equivalent of Liadov or Stravinsky but without the Slav element. Impressions of other composers are transient - Sibelius, Glass, Copland - but certainly there. I mention them only to help you find your bearings a little.
 
The notes in English only are definitive and are by the composer of this often intimately confiding music. .
 
Rob Barnett
 


 


EXPLORE MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL

Making a Donation to MusicWeb

Writing CD reviews for MWI

About MWI
Who we are, where we have come from and how we do it.

Site Map

How to find a review

How to find articles on MusicWeb
Listed in date order

Review Indexes
   By Label
      Select a label and all reviews are listed in Catalogue order
   By Masterwork
            Links from composer names (eg Sibelius) are to resource pages with links to the review indexes for the individual works as well as other resources.

Themed Review pages

Jazz reviews

 

Discographies
   Composer
      Composer surveys
   National
      Unique to MusicWeb -
a comprehensive listing of all LP and CD recordings of given works
.
Prepared by Michael Herman

The Collector’s Guide to Gramophone Company Record Labels 1898 - 1925
Howard Friedman

Book Reviews

Complete Books
We have a number of out of print complete books on-line

Interviews
With Composers, Conductors, Singers, Instumentalists and others
Includes those on the Seen and Heard site

Nostalgia

Nostalgia CD reviews

Records Of The Year
Each reviewer is given the opportunity to select the best of the releases

Monthly Best Buys
Recordings of the Month and Bargains of the Month

Comment
Arthur Butterworth Writes

An occasional column

Phil Scowcroft's Garlands
British Light Music articles

Classical blogs
A listing of Classical Music Blogs external to MusicWeb International

Reviewers Logs
What they have been listening to for pleasure

Announcements

 

Community
Bulletin Board

Give your opinions or seek answers

Reviewers
Past and present

Helpers invited!

Resources
How Did I Miss That?

Currently suspended but there are a lot there with sound clips


Composer Resources

British Composers

British Light Music Composers

Other composers

Film Music (Archive)
Film Music on the Web (Closed in December 2006)

Programme Notes
For concert organizers

External sites
British Music Society
The BBC Proms
Orchestra Sites
Recording Companies & Retailers
Online Music
Agents & Marketing
Publishers
Other links
Newsgroups
Web News sites etc

PotPourri
A pot-pourri of articles

MW Listening Room
MW Office

Advice to Windows Vista users  
Questionnaire    
Site History  
What they say about us
What we say about us!
Where to get help on the Internet
CD orders By Special Request
Graphics archive
Currency Converter
Dictionary
Magazines
Newsfeed  
Web Ring
Translation Service

Rules for potential reviewers :-)
Do Not Go Here!
April Fools






Untitled Document


Reviews from previous months
Join the mailing list and receive a hyperlinked weekly update on the discs reviewed. details
We welcome feedback on our reviews. Please use the Bulletin Board
Please paste in the first line of your comments the URL of the review to which you refer.