Marshall McGuire
Marshall McGuire brings the harp into contemporary Australian music with uncommon colour and nerve. He specialises in both baroque and modern repertoire, drawing out unusual sonorities and serving new works with technical sureness and interpretative sympathy.
His Australian harp recital moves from the cool poise of Peggy Glanville-Hicks’s Sonata through Helen Gifford’s slightly sinister Fable to Barry Conyngham’s seven short movements of stasis, burst and colouristic effect. He arranges Sculthorpe and Koehne so that piano and guitar originals settle into harp texture with natural ease. Composers have long sought his guidance; he has commissioned and premiered more than a hundred new works for the instrument. The playing yields glassy swirls, exotic guitar-like colours and consistently interesting sonorities that keep attention fixed. As a chamber partner he threads the harp through song, oboe d’amore with tape, and intimate duos, always extending what the instrument can say.
Compositions by Marshall McGuire appear on
Alchemy
Alicia Crossley, one of Australia’s leading recorder players, presents transcriptions that open classical, romantic, impressionist and contemporary repertoire to tenor and bass recorder.
Marshall McGuire also appears on
Curiosities: Chamber Music by Eve Duncan
Chamber music by Australian composer Eve Duncan, performed by artists from Australia and abroad, among them the Australian National Academy of Music String Ensemble and pianist Michael Kieran Harvey.