Australian Music Centre | Breaking sound barriers

Event Details

James Judd Conductor

Lilburn Drysdale Overture
Delius orch. Beecham
A Village Romeo and Juliet: The Walk to the Paradise Garden
Arnold English Dances Set II
Maria Grenfell Fanfare for a City
Copland Our Town: Music from the Film Score 
Bernstein On The Town: Three Dance Episodes

The country and the city come together in this programme paying homage to two very different landscapes. Douglas Lilburn, the grandfather of New Zealand classical music, wrote his Drysdale Overture while still a young man studying at London’s Royal College of Music. The Overture nostalgically portrays the pastoral landscape of his family’s farm in the Turakina Valley.

English composer Frederick Delius’ Walk to the Paradise Garden, from his opera A Village Romeo and Juliet, is a dreamily romantic interlude, featuring the woodwind section at their most expressive. Malcolm Arnold’s English Dances, meanwhile, gathers the best of English country folk dances into a charming and colourful suite of toe-tapping tunes.

Then NZ composer Maria Grenfell sweeps us into the city with her jubilant Fanfare for a City, while Aaron Copland’s beautiful film score for Our Town is a nostalgic view of small town life in Grover’s Corner, New Hampshire. Leonard Bernstein’s Three Dance Episodes, from material composed for the musical On The Town, brings 1940s New York to life before your eyes, with its slinky jazz melodies, hopping bebop rhythms and irresistible swing.

Featured non-Australian music: Lilburn, Delius orch. Beecham, Arnold, Copland, Bernstein

Further information for this event is available online at the event's website or by phone on 0800 479 674

Featured Australian Works

Featured artists

• Performer New Zealand Symphony Orchestra
• Conductor James Judd