Listen & tracks
2 of 5 tracks have a preview · 4 works · 61:18
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1 Images for Orchestra (1984) David Joseph 12:41
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2 The Dream for Small Orchestra (1986) David Joseph 15:11
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Clarinet Concerto (1989)David Joseph 2 movements13:11
- 3 First movement 4:29
- 4 Second movement 8:42
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5 Symphony for Organ and Strings (1990) David Joseph 20:15
This volume centres on four works from the 1980s and 1990. It includes the Clarinet Concerto commissioned by the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra for Nigel Sabin, and the Symphony for Organ and Strings written for the new organ at Adelaide Town Hall.
Images for Orchestra (1984), composed after a year in Spain, was recorded by the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra under Dobbs Franks before a live audience at the ABC’s Studio 520 in Adelaide. The Dream for Small Orchestra (1985), commissioned by the Adelaide Chamber Orchestra for its tenth-anniversary programme, was likewise captured live. Clarinet Concerto (1989), written for Sabin, was recorded at the ABC’s Odeon Theatre, Hobart, with the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra under Franks. Symphony for Organ and Strings (1990), commissioned by the Adelaide Chamber Orchestra, was recorded at Adelaide Town Hall with Graham Abbott conducting and Melville Waters as organ soloist.
The following is a partial transcript from the ABC programme “The Music Show”, broadcast in October 2006:
Andrew Ford: David Joseph is not a household name. Move has put out two CDs of this Australian composer, and what fine music this is.
Martin Buzacott: Why in this age of widespread arts funding a composer this good has to make his living as a lawyer?
But these are two marvellous discs. They mainly consist of live recordings and they cover his career from when he emerged as an interesting young composer in the early 1980s, and to now when he’s writing what I think is some of the best music in Australia at the moment.
Andrew Ford: This piano concerto is astonishing. Absolutely extraordinary. Is there a better Australian piano concerto? Played by Michael Kieran Harvey and what a performance!
Andrew Ford: this is mostly orchestral music including a clarinet concerto and an organ symphony and for me they’re the most impressive of works.
Martin Buzacott: I’m a big fan of study for strings “Scheherezade” as well. What he’s got is this amazing ear for orchestration. You can see that developing from the early works like ‘Images’ right through to the later pieces where the orchestration becomes not just an experiment in itself but it becomes integral to the musical statement. What I like is the sense of . . .
Martin Buzacott: Sense of drama within his music. It’s always really exciting but naturally so – it’s not forced. Extraordinary
Andrew Ford: let’s hope these discs are snapped up, but also fall in the hands of those who program for our orchestras around the country.
Reviews
The intriguing music of Australian composer David Joseph is restless and uncompromising. The swirling, scurrying clusters of sounds and constantly shifting textures gives these works an elusive, evanescent quality that both fascinates and frustrates. ★★★
The music on this disc reveals Joseph as a creative colourist whose technical command of orchestration allows him to vary timbre and texture to good effect. Images (1984) and The Dream, a 1985 commission from the Adelaide Chamber Orchestra, are intriguing and attractive soundscapes that contrast with the bleak and remorseless Symphony for Organ and Strings (1990). The 1989 Clarinet Concerto written for Nigel Sabin (who plays here with the Tasmanian Symphony), with its minimalist allusions, is a thoroughly modern tour-de-force.
Artists
David Joseph
composer
David Joseph (b. 1954) is a Melbourne-born Australian composer whose orchestral and chamber music is marked by vivid colour, lyric invention and a keen ear for texture. His catalogue ranges from concertos and string studies to ballet scenes and intimate chamber scores.
Adelaide Symphony Orchestra
orchestra
The Adelaide Symphony Orchestra is South Australia’s principal orchestra, founded in Adelaide in 1936 and giving public concerts from the following year. It remains central to the state’s concert, opera, ballet and festival life.
Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra
orchestra
The Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra has an enviable reputation as one of the world's great small orchestras. With a full-time strength of 47 players, which can be augmented when the programme demands, it is known for classical polish and a lively commitment to new work.
Adelaide Chamber Orchestra
orchestra
The Adelaide Chamber Orchestra is an Adelaide ensemble recorded here in live Australian orchestral repertoire. The discs include works it commissioned for its own programmes, among them music for small orchestra and for organ and strings.
Digital booklet
Digital booklet Notes, texts and credits — read online or download the PDF Download the PDFPerformers
- Adelaide Symphony Orchestra · orchestra · track 1
- Dobbs Franks · conductor · tracks 1, 3 and 4
- Brenton Langbein · conductor · track 2
- Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra · orchestra · tracks 3 and 4
- Adelaide Chamber Orchestra · orchestra · tracks 2 and 5
- Graham Abbott · conductor · track 5
- Nigel Sabin · clarinet · tracks 3 and 4
- Melville Waters · organ · track 5
Technical credit
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Thanks to
Creative Australia
Details
- List price
- $25.00 AUD
- Total playing time
- 61 minutes 18 seconds
- Release date
- 2005
- Categories
- Australian, Classical, Orchestral, Organ
- Musical work copyright
- © 2005 Move Records
- Sound recording copyright
- ℗ 2005 Move Records
- Catalogue
- MD 3301
- EAN
- 9314574330120
More to explore
Dreams: Works for Small Orchestra
Australian composer David Joseph gathers choreographically inspired works for small orchestra from 1986 to 1994 in Dreams, tracing memory, dream states and perception through richly textured, psychologically charged writing.
Through Tropical Stars
David Joseph’s Through Tropical Stars gathers five chamber works inspired by the natural world. From the garden-like imagery of Concertino to the quiet melancholy of The Afternoon, the music brings nature’s textures, patterns and sounds into focus.
Works for String Orchestra
Seventeen years after David Joseph’s Selected Works, Vol. 2 won wide critical acclaim, Works for String Orchestra gathers previously unreleased recordings, remastered for this album and showing his vivid, evocative style for strings.
David Joseph Selected Works, Vol. 2
The second volume of David Joseph’s selected works brings together the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, The Academy of Melbourne, and pianist Michael Kieran Harvey in three substantial late-twentieth-century scores.
Milerum's Basket
A 2002 portrait of Adelaide composer Becky Llewellyn across chamber, orchestral and choral forces, with the Adelaide Symphony and Chamber Orchestras, Adelaide Chamber Singers, soloists and a multimedia video of Berceuse.
There is an Island
A tuneful, dramatic cantata by Don Kay on Tasmania’s early colonial history and the fate of the full-blood Tasmanian Aboriginal people, with Clive Sansom’s lyrics. Paired with George Dreyfus’s The Song of the Maypole.