Elephantasy: Orchestral and Operatic Music of Eve Duncan

Even-tempered retrospective. In essence, this all represents a mini-retrospective of Duncan’s activity, bridging from 2012 (the Sydney Opera House concerto) to 2018 (Aer Turas and From a Star Afar). This CD is commended to those who have sympathy with Australian composition, especially of a type that follows an approachable middle ground and avoids attention-seeking novelty for its own sake. The two parts of Duncan’s piano concerto have Michael Kieran Harvey investing his brilliance in its solo part. Harvey appears on the following duo track, with Tristram Williams playing trumpet. This work moves with an energy that relaxes only in its final bars, both instruments handling a limited number of motives to happy effect. As far as the work’s language goes, Duncan walks a kind of middle road between complexity and sophisticated simplicity where even the dissonances aim to strike few sparks and suggestions of tonal underpinning loom large. As anticipated, Harvey performs the solo From a Star Afar with admirable sympathy, the underlying vision here being of observing Earth from outside itself. No tricks as the piece winds its way along with a kind of calm determination – but it’s over very quickly, coming in at under 90 seconds. As far as I can detect, the six extracts from The Aspern Papers is the only time even parts of the opera have been performed in this country. The Australian Music Centre site suggests that a performance took place in Manila a year previously, but that occasion in all probability featured only the overture, Track 1 on this CD. Will we be likely to hear a complete performance at any time soon? Probably not, particularly considering the parlous state of contemporary Australian music in 2021, let alone the fits and starts that beset the larger, tradition-minded companies. A pity, because Duncan’s work has its advantages: its language easily assimilable, its characterization lucid, demands on vocalists and instrumentalists (a chamber group here, conducted by Phillips) falling well inside the competence of professionals.

Orchestral scores, some with piano soloist and others with voice, allow Duncan to paint with broad colourful strokes whilst in the smaller scale works we hear a composer who seems to enjoy polishing small motifs and making them sparkle. Two little gems of composition are given delightfully charming performances by pianist MKH and Tristram Williams. The solo piano work From a Star Afar is less than 2 minutes but its brevity is just spot on.