CRITICAL REVIEWS
I
Had a Dream
Australian
Chamber Choir directed by Douglas Lawrence
Centrall Hall, Australian Catholic University, Melbourne
8pm November 22
Brenton
Broadstock's I Had a Dream, in memory of Michael Easton,
sets out a three-part elegy in haunting consonantal
language, rising to an aggressive climax in the works's
central questioning stages and achieving a
throat-tighteningpower in its final soft repetitions of the
line "I am remembered", here delivered with tactful
understatement.
Clive O'Connell, p23 The Age
November 24, 2007
I
Had a Dream
Australian
Chamber Choir directed by Douglas Lawrence
Trinitatis Church, Copenhagen, 8pm July 20,
2007
Thanks
to the expressiveness of the singing, Brenton Broadstock's
'I Had
A Dream' became a most beautiful experience.
Berlingste Tidende, Copenhagen,
July 23, 2007
CD
REVIEWS
HOT
OFF THE PRESS!!
good
angel's tears
Etcetera KTC 2026 (Netherlands)
review: September 2007 Music web
international
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
http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2007/Sept07/Braodstock_KTC2026.htm
Timeless
ABC Classics
Australian Composer Series 476 8041
2005
This
is another in the excellent and extensive Australian
Composers Series from ABC. Broadstock has an interesting
biography. He was brought up in the Salvation Army and had
experience of brass bands when young – as well as a
peripatetic “institutionalised” youth. Incidentally those
addicted to Strine might like to know according to the
booklet notes that down under the Salvation Army is known
as the “Salvos”. Initially a trombonist Broadstock
gravitated to bass guitar in a rock band. Later he studied
composition in America and in Sydney with Sculthorpe.
This disc spans a good two decades’s worth of his work. We
open with the rather Waltonian 1981 Festive Overture – all
dynamic percussion, swirling strings and evincing a real
insider’s knowledge of the brass section. Timeless is
dedicated to his daughter and was composed in 2002. Written
for string orchestra it ranges avidly from reflective
stillness to almost Straussian effulgence. The final
section brings the beauty of melancholy, one refined
through experience to something approaching reconciliation.
This is a lovely work – touching and unpretentious but full
of life, colour and with a kind of narrative-emotive core
running through it.
The Mountain is from an earlier period and is for chamber
forces. It’s dedicated to his erstwhile teacher,
Sculthorpe. The brass calls and pitch wobbles lend it a
tense air but one senses a genetic link to Sibelius. The
high winds and brass are chilly but the drive from about
5:00 is monumental. Later we have some translucent colours
and textures, outer-spacey, as our gaze seems to rise from
the peak to far beyond. In terms of sonority and direction
this is maybe a lesser work than Timeless but its ambition
and control are evident from the start.
Federation Square: Rooms of Wonder is more of an occasional
piece, having been written for the opening of a city square
– hence the title. “Rooms of Wonder”, the subtitle, alerts
us to the quiet rapture of discovery. With its moments of
enraptured stasis and brusquely angular writing this peace
is plastic, almost sculptural. It has the effect of
suggesting a head-turning excitement at the newness of the
architecture. The pitch bending and motoric writing hint at
the raw newness and the tenderness and aerial dancing
sections convey the excitement of the Square.
Finally there’s the Fourth Symphony subtitled Born from
Good Angel’s Tears. It’s a compact work not appreciably
longer than Federation Square. This was written in 1995.
Slowly evolving lines have once more a complement of
glissandi and pitch “switching.” And once more there’s a
Sibelian sense of organic growth and development through
these means are very different. There’s Golden Mean climax
– strong and involving – and a warmly optimistic
conclusion.
First class performances and values attend this issue – in
every way a splendid platform for Broadstock and his
exciting music.
Jonathan Woolf
musicweb, February 2007
http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2007/Feb07/broadstock_4768041.htm
Timeless
ABC Classics
Australian Composer Series 476 8041
2005
Twenty-two
years of Broadstock's compositional techniques are
showcased in these five selected works that represent
evolutionary milestones of his early, middle and current
phases.... This anthology demonstrate's Broadstock's
serialised, prickly modernisms and rich neo-tonalities,
which cleverly balance artistic expression alongside
utterances of social conscience. Four
Stars.
Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra/Ola Rudner
Limelight
Magazine March 2006
Timeless
ABC Classics
Australian Composer Series 476 8041
2005
Brenton
Broadstock is an accomplished composer……. This collection
of his work is terrific. His works Timeless, The Mountain,
Federation Square and Symphony #4 are intensely rich. The
TSO under Rudner accentuates the colour of the music and
its Nordic flavours. The symphony is particularly fine, a
lush, grand work of genuine spritual depth. The TSO ought
to be proud of this effort.
Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra/Ola Rudner
Greg Barns , The
Mercury March 4, 2006 (Tasmania)
Timeless
ABC Classics
Australian Composer Series 476 8041 2005
These
bold and eloquent orchestral works should appeal to those
who respond to neo-romanticism but have no objection to the
seamless integration of more modernistic elements into what
is basically a harmony-based, modal-tonal idiom. Sibelius
is a very audible influence on Broadstock’s impressively
broad landscape canvases; one feels his presence especially
in the more recent works, in which Broadstock has more
fully embraced a vocabulary based on tonal centers. There
is a strong sense of a human element in Broadstock’s music;
concerned as he is with social and environmental concerns,
it is perhaps inevitable that he would seek to avoid
ivory-tower abstraction, and all the works here, from the
lively (very tonal) Festive Overture - which sounds just
like what it says it is - to the brief, compressed
Tapiola-like symphony (not much longer than the other works
here, based on a modern fairy tale with a humanistic theme,
quoted in extenso in the booklet) are instantly accessible
and make their emotional point surely and accurately.
Tasmanian Symphony
Orchestra/Ola Rudner.
Records
International Jan 2007
21www.recordsinternational.com/cd.php?cd=02I086
good
angel's tears Etcetera KTC
2026 (Netherlands)
Many
composers have held to the idea that good music might help
to make the world a better place. Few, however, have
expressed it with stark, simple conviction of Australian
composer Brenton Broadstock: 'As a human being, I believe
that I have a moral obligation to do what I can to improve
the society I live in. The corollary of this, as a human
being who is predominantly involved in the artistic
expression of music composition, is that I am morally
obliged to improve society through my art.' Nowhere in the
oeuvre of this respected composer - now in mid-career - is
this belief more convincingly displayed than in his five
symphonies, which here receive their first complete
recording. And there's ample time to judge: the shortest
work runs to 20 minutes, the longest to 39, and the set
fills two discs.
These symphonies ask big questions and tell deep and
important stories. Clues are given in their titles, drawn
from literary sources; all the pieces own to extra-musical
sources, and are all in an important sense meditations on
the problem of suffering – and especially on the capacity
of human beings to cause suffering, to ameliorate it, or to
transcend it. ‘Toward the Shining Light’ is the name of the
First Symphony. Written in 1988, its concern is with those
who, like the composer’s own son, are severely handicapped:
the ‘shining light’ it hopes for is an acceptance of this
cruel fate. The Second Symphony, ‘Stars in a Dark Night’,
appeared a year later. It conjures up a war zone – both the
actual ‘zone’ of the First World War, and a metaphorical
place of violent psychic contestation between the rational
and the irrational, or the sane and the insane. The Third
Symphony, ‘Voices from the Fire’ (1992), pursues this theme
on to related terrains – the Holocaust, and the destruction
of the Tasmanian aborigines. The Fourth Symphony (1995)
stays with the topic of war but offers some hope. Titled
‘Born from Good Angel’s Tears’, its ‘text’ is a fairy story
about an angel whose tears at the sight of so much
suffering fall to the ground and become children in whose
eyes we can see our own goodness. So we have ‘inner’ selves
that may be unknown to us – a theme that the Fifth Symphony
(1999) takes up under the title ‘Dark Side’ (‘everyone is a
moon, and has a dark side that he never shows anyone’, as
Mark Twain has it).
These moral explorations come to life in a musical style
one might describe as neo-Romantic modernism. Full of dark,
broody colours and an elegiac lyricism that typically moves
at slow tempos through long-breathed paragraphs, this is
music written after disaster, after tragedy, after the
worst that the twentieth century had to offer. The
orchestral writing conveys a sense of sonic depths and
conjures magical effects of various kinds; its sound, pace
and incandescent spiritual energy, no less than its pathos,
dignity and search for transcendence, at times give me the
feeling that I am listening to a modern Bruckner.
Though the music never seeks to ingratiate, by the same
token it is never less than immediately accessible at some
level. In general, the most effective – and affecting –
passages tend to have a disarming simplicity of design;
most listeners are likely to be struck, too, by the
powerful and virtuosic writing for the brass. The music is
translucent: some passages fairly blaze with light.
One misgiving I might have is about the tendency of the
symphonies to be overly graphic (Broadstock’s programmes
sometimes bind the music too tightly, so that the art of
composition seems constrained by the music’s own external
source); another is that the ideas have about them a
certain sameness. But there is no question that these works
are hugely impressive, as much for their craft and beauty
as for their deeply serious intent. The booklet notes are
ample and instructive. And the performances are
astonishing: quite simply, the Krasnoyarsk Academic
Symphony Orchestra under Andrew Wheeler is a revelation.
Christopher
Ballantine, January 2001
International Record Review (UK)
good
angel's tears Etcetera KTC 2026 (Netherlands)
Australian
composer Broadstock is a part of the Romantic symphonic
tradition in a manner not unlike Havergal Brian or Robert
Simpson, to the output of both of which composers his music
sometimes bears a passing resemblance. An extramusical
theme which runs through all his symphonic works is the
contrast and opposition of opposing forces, specifically
identified as those of light and dark, good and evil.
Symphonic form lends itself to this sort of conflict and
contrast, of course, though Broadstock’s symphonies achieve
their analogy of symphonic form through the opposition of
timbres, dynamics and relative activity, as well as degrees
of harmonic tension, rather than the traditional key
relationships. Nonetheless, the works are tonal, and
function like extended tone-poems. As to the content; the
battle between light and dark has been a staple of Western
art since time immemorial, and Broadstock continues the
tradition with individuality and emotional power, whether
his subject is the struggle of the individual against
mental illness (the 2nd Symphony refers to the tragic
history of English composer Ivor Gurney), or more global
concerns. These are powerful pieces indeed, and should
appeal to anyone who responds to the 20th-century symphonic
traditions which include figures as diverse as Sibelius,
Panufnik, Brian or Sallinen.
2 CDs. Krasnoyarsk Academic Symphony Orchestra, Andrew
Wheeler conductor
May 2001
Records International Magazine (USA)
Bright
Tracks Move Records MD 3204
(Australia)
Those
of you who made the Broadstock symphony box-set (05C080)
such an unexpected success last May will find more of this
outstanding composer's unique voice in the majority of
these pieces. Richly lyrical and generally modal,
Broadstock composes in arches which attain a climax (the
"Golden Mean") roughly two thirds of the way through before
returning to the mood of the beginning. One striking
earlier piece here is the 1984 Beast from Air, an
impassioned protest against French nuclear testing in the
South Pacific, which evokes the danger of nuclear fallout
through stabbing percussion and grating trombone. The
booklet is a work of art in itself and provides a plethora
of very interesting information on the composer as well as
on the works recorded here.
2 CDs. Various Artists incl.
Petra String Quartet, Josephine Tan, Ian Holtham, Linda
Kouvaras (piano).
December
2001
Records International Magazine (USA)
Bright
Tracks Move Records MD 3204
(Australia)
Brenton
Broadstock is a quiet achiever as this extensive and
superbly presented anthology makes clear. His music is at
its best when his social conscience reacts to people; his
multiply handicapped son, say, or a person living with
AIDS. In these cases a tenderness both harmonic and melodic
comes to the fore and the listener is left beguiled and
touched. A wide variety of local artists give consistently
fine performances.
Tony Way, The
Age Green Guide
Bright
Tracks Move Records MD 3204
(Australia)
Deeply
serious and intensely personal, Broadstock’s music can
connect so directly that poignancy approaches
pain.
Andrew
Scott, The Sunday Age
Bright
Tracks Move Records MD 3204
(Australia)
....they
give a good perspective on Broadstock’s development,
especially the more expressive, lyrical elements of it, and
reward careful listening.
Kim
Lockwood, Herald Sun
Essays
for Brass (Vol. 3) Polyphonic
QPRL 202D (UK)
BBs
contributions, Born to Battle and the earlier Rhapsody,
based on Dykes' tune St Aelred, are key ingredients.
Beautifully tailored, their energetic, intricate inner
lines are delineated with crystal clarity, their rich,
uncompromising harmonies luscious in quality, the music's
passion unbridled. Gorgeous solo playing underlines the
wealth of this band's individual talents, but it is David
King's penetrating observance of the music's meaning that
produces performances that Broadstock and his audiences
will probably never hear bettered.
YBS Band, David King
conductor
Peter
Wilson,
The British Bandsman October 2000
(UK)
Bright
Tracks Move Records MD 3204
(Australia)
Brenton
Broadstock is a quiet achiever as this extensive and
superbly presented anthology makes clear. His music is at
its best when his social conscience reacts to people; his
multiply handicapped son, say, or a person living with
AIDS. In these cases a tenderness both harmonic and melodic
comes to the fore and the listener is left beguiled and
touched. A wide variety of local artists give consistently
fine performances.
Tony Way, The
Age Green Guide
Bright
Tracks Move Records MD 3204
(Australia)
Deeply
serious and intensely personal, Broadstock’s music can
connect so directly that poignancy approaches pain.
Andrew Scott,
The Sunday Age
Bright
Tracks Move Records MD 3204
(Australia)
....they
give a good perspective on Broadstock’s development,
especially the more expressive, lyrical elements of it, and
reward careful listening.
Kim Lockwood,
Herald Sun
Giants in
the Land Move Records MD3239
The
two Broadstock pieces are substantial and serious,
harmonically engaging and, like most of the music on the
disc, avoiding transcendental virtuosity in favour of
musicianly content and argument.
Ian Holtham (piano) [Composers: Broadstock, Greenbaum,
Selleck, Kouvaras, McCombe, Ingham]
September
2003
Records International Magazine (USA)
Giants in
the Land Move Records MD3239
The
first piece I auditioned with the Aurora 2s (speakers) was
the gorgeous Giants in the Land, by Brenton Broadstock,
played on piano by Ian Holtham (it was originally
commissioned for organ). It works so well for piano that I
still can’t imagine it as an organ work, and the limpid,
flowing sounds Holtham extracts from the Steinway D flowed
from the speakers like water. The sustained pedal notes
remain tonally distinct at all times, and the Aurora 2s
maintained the sense of acoustic space, even during the
‘giant steps’ moments when Holtham hammers the keys with a
vengeance. This work is on a Move CD of the same title
(Move MD3239) that I’d recommend to anyone who loves music,
but particularly piano music. Holtham’s playing is
masterful, the recording exquisite, and all the works are
not only wonderfully conceived, but also thought provoking.
All the tracks are great.
Greg Borrowman
Australian Hi-Fi Feb 2005 p36
Cross on
the Hill Immortal
Themes CD SPS 128
(UK)
......a
most interesting work from the professional Australian
composer Brenton Broadstock. Entitled The Cross On The Hill
it is a slow, meditative sound-picture of a cross erected
by local people on a Umbrian hillside. One imagines that
this piece.....will reward repeated
listening.
Andrew Justice, trombone, International Staff Band/Stephen
Cobb
Dudley Bright
(UK)
Take All
My Sins Away
This
superb arrangement by Australian composer, Brenton
Broadstock. of Catherine Book-Clibborn’s lovely song will
provide the perfect reflective moment in any band’s
programme.
The arrangement is uncomplicated, yet cleverly crafted by
this highly respected musician. After an introduction by
full band, the melody is shared between horns and baritones
and then cornets, with contributions from around the band
at varying dynamic levels until the music subsides into a
very quiet, peaceful ending. Broadstock’s writing is a
first class nature and his skilful use of the
instrumentation of the brass band creates a wonderful
picture, which is colourful and sonorous, warm and tender.
This lovely piece will endear itself to any lover of
quality brass music. The parts and full score are well
produced and I definitely recommend this piece from Muso’s
Media.
John
Maines,
The British Bandsman January 25, 2003
(UK)
PERFORMANCE
REVIEWS
Sunburnt
Land (UK Premiere)
YBS
Band/David King
RNCM Festival of Brass, Manchester, January 29, 2006
....it
was Broadstock's
'Sunburnt
Land' that the band concluded its contribution here. The
music takes its inspiration from the poem
'My
Country' by Dorothea Mackellar (of which the second verse
in particular is familiar to Australians) and the beautiful
images of the Australian landscape unfold within the music.
At times, it's so peaceful, reflective and captivating
listening but culminating in a dramatic ending. There were
some quite delightful moments within it, and no-doubt those
present at its premiere will have been enthralled by its
performance.
Malcolm Wood,
4barsrest.com, February 6
http://www.4barsrest.com/reviews/concerts/con270.asp
Stations
of the Cross - Via Crucis (Premiere)
Australian Contemporary Chorale
conducted by Hildy Essex
Directed by Jeannie Marsh
April
22, 2006 BMW Edge Theatre, Melbourne
Miss
Eagle is searching for words to describe what she
experienced last night at BMW Edge at Federation Square.
Via Crucis: Stations of the Cross, a choral work by Brenton
Broadstock, was presented and performed by Australian
Contemporary Chorale.
This was not a static event. Stations used not only voice -
but minimal costume, movement, lighting, image, percussion
and textile to bring to life and give contemporary meaning
to an ancient reflection on events surrounding Jesus as he
went to his crucifixion, death, and resurrection. Miss
Eagle was so impressed, so caught up in the reverie and
mystique portrayed, that it was only with great difficulty
that her hands came together to join in the applause at the
conclusion.
Originally, in ancient days, the Stations were performed in
Rome to recall sad events that happened in another place.
To bring this to remembrance, Broadstock's friend,
Rome-based British artist Justin Bradshaw, produced a scene
for each of the fourteen stations which were displayed for
viewing as one entered the seating area. These paintings
are reprinted in the program.
As one waited for the performance to begin, images were
presented above the performance pit to remind us of those
who stood up and spoke out to see wrongs righted. The
images included Koiki Mabo, Ghandi, Martin Luther King,
Emmeline Pankhurst, and Mother Teresa.
Two women need to take credit for the overall production.
First is Hildy Essex who is the founder of the Australian
Contemporary Chorale (previously known as the Melbourne
Composition Choir) and its conductor. The Chorale's aim is
to become the premier choir performing original Australian
composition. The second is Jeannie Marsh. Jeannie's
influence took this performance from chorale rendition into
dramatic performance. The voices of Sam Qualtrough (tenor
soloist) and Jane Hendry (soprano soloist) were a delight
and brought richness and colour to the performance.
At the conclusion of the evening, Jon Cleary, the
Australian religious broadcasters and commentator, launched
the Chorale's CD, Stations.
And back to BMW Edge. From the seating, the audience looks
across the Performance Pit, through the majesty of steel
and glass, to the Yarra shimmering darkly under the city
lights. Miss Eagle knows of only one better venue. It too
sits beside water shimmering darkly at night under city
lights - but at Bennelong Point.
Miss Eagle
http://eaglesplace.blogspot.com/2006_04_01_archive.html
I
touched your glistening tears...
Macquarie Trio, Macquarie
Theatre, June 26
Brenton
Broadstock's work I touched your glistening tears
accompanies a heart-wrenching poem by the composer, telling
of a father's sorrow and anger as he watches the decline of
a severely handicapped child. The message is intimate and
painful, but the music is disarmingly simple - an
arpeggiated accompaniment marking time below a yearning
melody, occasionally choked by grace
notes.
The
trio took to the delicate lyricism with a lovely grace, and
did not shy away from the awkward appoggiatura, stumbling
with the music as if searching for the right way forward.
It was unavoidably moving.
Harriet
Cunningham,
The Sydney Morning Herald June 29, 2005
I touched
your glistening tears...
Macquarie Trio, Verbrugghen
Hall, June 28
The
finest and most moving performance was of Australian
composer Brenton Broadstock's I Touched Your Glistening
Tears, written for his disabled son Matthew. Beautifully
proportioned, this simple, touching work opened with
extended, unadorned string lines balanced against gently
rippling repeated piano phrases, which built up to a
passionately intense climax before subsiding into a mood of
resignation and acceptance.
The work was ideally realised in the trio's controlled but
fervently expressive performance.
Murray
Black,
The Australian June 30, 2005
I touched
your glistening tears...
Macquarie Trio, Verbrugghen
Hall, June 28, 2005
.....this
heart-wrenching work, with its grace notes and dialogue
between violin and cello over a simple, minimalist piano
accompaniment, left the audience
spellbound.
Steve
Moffatt,
The Manly Daily July 1, 2005
Timeless
(Premiere)
Australia Pro Arte conducted by
Ben Northey
Melba Hall, University of Melbourne 2002
With Timeless for string orchestra, Broadstock continues
his interest in placing an autobiographical reading upon
the musical text…the inspirational base for Timeless is, in
part, Broadstock’s reflection of his life within the
Australian landscape over the past 50 years. As we have
come to expect from Broadstock, this is an extremely
well-crafted piece. It begins quietly with almost a
dream-like introspection hovering over the ensemble. This
state periodically returns and is broken up by sections of
joyous abandon. By using this emotional pendulum, the
composer maintains our interest in the journey of a life.
This work should be heard beyond Melba Hall.
Joel
Crotty,
The Age June 18,
2002
Stars In
A Dark Night
Melbourne Symphony Orchestra
Metropolis Series
Malthouse Theatre June 22, 2002
To
conclude, we had a veteran work…..Stars In A Dark Night.
The symphony’s consequent dualistic nature makes for
paragraphs of immense power as well as intentionally
juxtaposed interludes of quiescence… Here the level of
performance lifted markedly in the hectic moment,
particularly in the bursts of motor-rhythm, marking a
confronting depiction of the personality’s darker facets,
which the wind and brass entered into with vigour. With
this symphony….the language is personal and engrossing. You
have no fears that the material has been stretched beyond
its limits or that the prime aim is titillation or effect.
(The) composer is speaking without screens, heart to heart,
but with the ability to call on a formidable technical
prowess.
Clive
O’Connell,
The Age Tuesday June 25,
2002
Gates of
Day (Premiere)
100
brass, 500 bell-ringers, military band
Sidney Myer Music Bowl, Melbourne November 3, 2001
Gates
of Day is an excellent example of a new score, written in a
non-patronising manner, which is firmly planted within the
capabilities of community musicians rather than in the
intellectual head-space of the contemporary music
fraternity. This massive work was performed on the last
afternoon of the Melbourne Festival in the newly renovated
Myer Music Bowl. The Footscray-Yarraville, Hawthorn, Kew,
and Moreland-Brunswick brass bands along with some of the
bellringers were stationed on the stage while others with
bells in hand gathered up the sides of the arena.
Subtle nuance was disregarded in favour of rhythmic
buoyancy and loud, sometimes familiar, tunes. Coupled with
this was the Charles Ives-effect of having a military band
march playing through the arena while the others were still
in full swing. This chaotic parade brought home not only
the sense of occasion but also a sense of fun.
When the composer moved on to the stage after the
performance, many in the audience were on their feet, and
hopefully a myth was dispelled that good composers are dead
composers.
And it also demonstrated that with good planning,
communities in regional Victoria are able and willing
participants (as bellringers in the Broadstock score) in
these large-scale events.
Joel
Crotty,
The Age December 31,
2001
Winds of
Change (Premiere)
Yorkshire Building Society
Band, David King conductor
European Brass Band Championships Gala Concert
Symphony Hall, Birmingham
To
Commission and programme a contemporary work as challenging
for players and audiences as BB's Winds of Change was a
bold step. That it cam off was a tribute to the band,
conductor and composer in equal measure. Broadstock has
clocked the fact that the surface of the brass band's
potential has so far only been scratched. His music, though
complex in textures, colours and scoring, was searingly
direct and carried an authority which is the hallmark of
real composer. The is world premiere heralded the arrival
of a new voice. he must be heard again -
soon.
Peter
Wilson,
The British Bandsman May 13, 2000
Festive
Overture
(F.O.)...gave
the musicians the opportunity to release their energy right
from the start. A sympathetic, rhythmic, powerfully
executed occasional piece.
Roel
van der Leeuw - Trouw (Concertgebouw, Amsterdam) July 1994
(AYO World Tour)
Some
early reviews:
Festive
Overture (1981)
..Displays
a virtuosic feeling for the drama of the orchestra. His
bounding imagination swept through a number of festive
moods, tempered by a gorgeous nocturnal scene of muted
strings. The success of this work can be measured by the
sustained excitement which it generated.
Timothy O'Connor - Townsville
Daily Bulletin 29.5.1981
(F.O.)...gave
the musicians the opportunity to release their energy right
from the start. A sympathetic, rhythmic, powerfully
executed occasional piece.
Roel van der Leeuw - Trouw (Amsterdam) July 1994
The
Mountain (1984)
..Achieved
genuine conviction in his fast
music
John Carmody - National Times 1.6.1984
..Brilliant
orchestral surges and flashes.. a strong sense of purpose
and surety.
Vincent Plush - Arts Illustrated 22.5.1984
Expedition
(1985)
..Broadstock
uses all the resources at his command, including a range of
percussion effects, to call up the ferocious heat, the
cruelly barren landscape, storms, pests, hunger and death.
This is an imaginative and evocative
piece.
Harvey Mitchell - The Australian 16.4.1986
Eheu
Fugaces (1982)
..carefully
organised, with an attractive and notably broad spectrum of
colour.
Kenneth Hince - The Age 23.7.1986
There
was a great deal more genuinely creative inspiration behind
B.B's Eheu Fugaces, a setting of three short texts.
Broadstock makes effective and eloquent use of his forces -
wailing woodwind, ominous percussion and agitated
strings.
Harvey Mitchell - The Australian 20.1.1986
Broadstock's
Eheu Fugaces is the most successful, as this piece wins or
loses on the performer's ability to pull off improvised
climaxes, which they do here to shattering
effect.
Lyle Chan — CD review in Soundscapes June-July 1996 p.78
Beast
From Air (1985)
..Chilling percussive effects..a well developed argument -
in an age of composition that is often inhuman and
inhumane, one has to welcome the occasional piece that is,
in the now old fashioned sense, "committed".
Harvey Mitchell - The Australian 16.4.1986
Aureole
3 (1984)
..it
emerged as a strong, believable and enriching piece of
admirable construction and typically well-explored
instrumental interest.
Michael Brimer - The Australian
This
haunting music creates its impact with a continuous
radiance of varying sound patterns
Milton Stephens - The Sun-Herald 1.10.1989
Aureole
4 (1984)
..the
echoes of past keyboard composers did not swamp the piece's
vital integrity.
Clive O'Connell - The Age 23.7.1986
And No
Birds Sing (1986/87)
..offered
a grim vision of the future through its jagged phrases of
protest against the use of chemicals that threaten the
balance of nature. But while we have music like this being
made and groups like this to play it, I'd like to think
there is some hope.
Jill Sykes - Sun Herald 12.7.1987
In The
Silence Of Night (1989)
..rivalled
Sculthorpe at his most elusive and impressionistic. Its
emotional content mirrors accurately what little I have
gleaned over the years of Sculthorpe's gentle, urbane
personality
Clive O'Connell - The Age 1.8.1988
Battlements
(1986)
.. A
complex work .. with some exciting brass elements and
unusual metallic percussion, as well as vivid string
participation.
Jeremy Vincent - The Herald 15.2.1988
..very
successfully evokes the landscape of rugged
grandeur.
Michael Brimer - The Australian 15.2.1988
..is
an interesting score, dense and complex in the texture of
its sound, with a constant movement of orchestral colour
that is lively and attractive...recalling the motionless
world of floating clouds and Haiku.
Kenneth Hince - The Age 16.2.1988
Toward
The Shining Light - Symphony #1 (1988)
..movingly
direct..functions with wrenching effectiveness. Its
vocabulary is uncomplex and uninhibitedly charged with
passionate feeling.
Clive O'Connell - The Age 23.5.1988
..excellent
and approachable piece...written with assurance, honesty
and love. With works such as this around, the future of
Australian composition looks
bright.
Michael Brimer - The Australian 23.5.1988
It
is unashamedly driven by extra-musical considerations and
it explicitly returns to the Mahlerian ethic of
transcendence....the bright optimism of the piece, allied
to a very approachable musical language, makes for a work
that could well establish a place in the
repertoire.
Laurie Strahan - The Australian 13.10.1989
..a
composer of high ideals and noble musical instincts...his
predominant mode of expression in this work is epic and
positive. Broadstock belongs, it seems, among that
interesting younger group of Australian composers who do
not mind being straightforward but manage to avoid sounding
musty. He has a generosity and scale of utterance which
might make it possible for him - to occupy a position in
our music comparable to that of Roy Harris in the music of
the United States.
Roger Covell - Sydney Morning Herald 13.10.1989
Stars In
A Dark Night - Symphony #2 (1989)
It
is a simply organised work in one lengthy movement,
comprising paragraphs of fierce aggression and meandering
calm, all based on rhythms or intervals that are instantly
comprehensible yet treated with outstanding subtlety.....in
the gentle 'lucid passages, Broadstock displays a touching
sensitivity...the melodies have an emotional integrity that
one finds rarely in works for large orchestra.This new
symphony is a welcome, and to my mind successful, addition
to the understocked repertoire of works for substantial
forces by Australian composers..... its sincerity and
command of orchestral colour are
unmistakable.
Clive O'Connell - The Age 13.11.1989
....an
extraordinary piece......It shares with the (Beethoven's)
Ninth the theme of the struggle for hope and joy in an
otherwise strife-torn world; but in an extraordinary
conclusion, anger triumphs over sanity in three enormous
chords....
Barbara Hebden - Brisbane Courier Mail 31.9. 91
Deserts
Bloom...Lakes Die (1990)
Alan
Cumberland conducted a compelling performance of this work
which, after a beautifully sustained opening, unfolded in
relentless cross-rhythms. John Fardon's rich double bass
added to the explosion of tonal color before the sound died
in savage, austere harmonies.
Barbara Hebden - Brisbane Courier-Mail 17.1.1990
...was
like a rock dropped into the the tranquil, secure waters of
classical form - a fertile metaphor for a work stemming
from Gil Stern's maxim...Broadstock is making a musical
statement about the environment. His imagery not only
suggests but seems to represent the sounds of nature, a
life system growing, gradually expanding, simple to
complex, through crisis, back to a lonely landscape that
works through more conflicting
elements.
Patricia Kelly - The Australian 13.11.1990
In
Chains (1990)
...is
a cleverly crafted duo which exercises both musicians who
undertake a performance: plenty of ornamental filigree for
the flautist and masses of complex chords for the
guitar.
Clive O'Connell - The Age 23.10.1990
Giants In
The Land (1991)
..the
concert's main interest came with...'Giants In The Land'...
An extraordinarily touching work displaying an unexpected
depth of elegaic affection, this work operated on a level
several removes higher than most of the other contents of
the program...
Clive O'Connell - The Age 9.4.1991
Voices
From The Fire - Symphony #3 (1991)
...the
choice of Broadstock is to be applauded. Here is a composer
who is not afraid to make grand gestures and who has the
vocabulary and musical intellect to back them up. Voices
From The Fire is...a strongly emotive piece, punctuated
with great orchestral outbursts of pain; yet Broadstock can
never resist the lure of beautiful sounds and this score,
like his previous two symphonies, is full of magical
harmonies and sonorities.
Laurie Strachan - The Australian 6.7.1992
...this
25 minute work of two movements...was inspired by the
horrors of racial genocide, and from the first bar leaves
no doubt about its emotional intensity, with orchestral
shrieks, wails, screams and shudders. The scoring is
texturally opulent yet remarkably lucid....The work
deserves to become well-known.
Fred Blanks - Sydney Morning Herald 9.7.1992
...the real highlight of the night had come with
Broadstock’s symphony, yet another example of the
composer’s relentless seriousness of purpose.....Broadstock
has constructed a two-movement work that maintains its
force and energy without deviation or relief. It is
strident and elegaic in turn; as with the composer’s two
earlier symphonies, there is an unmistakeable communication
of anguish. As far as the Australian content of the three
concerts went, this was the most cogent and affecting work
played.
Clive O’Connell - The Age 6.7.1992
...blazing
performance of B.B’s new symphony...This is a confident
two-movement work...it should go into the SSO
repertoire...
John Carmody - Sun-Herald 9.7.1992
(BB) felt
compelled to write his composition as a result of two
indelible visual impressions: an archival film about the
'execution of dozens of naked Jews', and a photograph of
the mournful eyes of the last aboriginal Tasmanian. The
result in Voices From The Fire is an acoustic memorial more
powerful than a thousand bronze plaques. Against a
background of evocative simplicity, lashing orchestral
outbursts and quiet vocalised sounds, Broadstock generates
an almost unearthly atmosphere which makes a strong
impression. An example is when coarse thundering passages
are reflected in delicately flickering strings, or widely
stretched clusters slowly glide down. Over the first
movement Broadstock wrote "with angst", and this fear is
palpable.
Helmut Mauro - Suddeutsche Zeitung 10.7.1994
His
memorial in sound for the victims of the Holocaust and for
the Aborigines wiped out by the Europeans was not
accomplished by hushed calm, but screams to the world about
the injustices by means of erupting bursts of
sound.
Rudiger Schwartz - Abendzeitung Munchen 18.7.1994
Fahrenheit
451 -
Chamber Opera (1992)
...very
effective new work...this was a most convincing piece of
music-theatre with ingenious music and
direction...
Maria Prerauer - Weekend Australian
24.10.1992