Composer Eve de Castro-Robinson: premieres, a revelation and a touch of defiance

Composer Eve de Castro-Robinson talks about her music at the At the World’s Edge Festival in October 2024

Photo supplied by AWE Festival

When composer Eve de Castro-Robinson began composing her orchestral work, Hour of Lead, she knew that it would receive its first performance as a prelude to Benjamin’s Britten’s masterpiece, his War Requiem, in Orchestra Wellington’s final concert of 2024. “Upstaged again,” she joked in a pre-concert talk. It was no surprise to her to have her work programmed with “something bigger, and more famous and older.” It’s an experience contemporary composers are used to.

De Castro-Robinson has been Orchestra Wellington’s Composer-in-residence for 2024. She describes her new work, the major fruit of that residency, as “four movements on the notion of pain” and “a sombre reminder of life’s fragility”.

The work’s title comes from a sometimes puzzling poem by Emily Dickinson, which begins: “After great pain, a formal feeling comes — " and ends with a stanza “This is the Hour of Lead – /Remembered, if outlived, /As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow – / First – Chill – then Stupor – then the letting go – ”.

De Castro-Robinson’s composition is also both puzzling and compelling. The emotions expressed are raw, authentic and sometimes fierce. Like real life, not all is tidy or fully comprehensible. Using dramatic musical gestures, the material is organized through dynamics, textures, and colours, as is typical of de Castro-Robinson’s approach.  Blocks of timbre – strident brass, melodious strings – and motivic shapes are sculpted in space, falling and rising. There are moments of dense sustained chords, sometimes quite dissonant, even cacophonous. In two movements, hymns sing poignantly through the texture, while foreboding bass drum and pizzicato basses hint at war and struggle.

Earlier this year, at City Gallery Wellington, de Castro-Robinson was inspired by Julia Morison’s huge canvases in her show Ode to Hilma. “I thought, then,” she told me in a recent interview, “how would I create a big black canvas, or a big white one, in music?” Her response was in the form of two big tutti chords, static in Hour of Lead’s texture, a high one in the second movement, “Bittersweet” and a low one in the 4th, “Chill”. Wind players are instructed to “stagger” their breathing in the score.

Hour of Lead is about 12 minutes long, ending with a highly effective gesture, the orchestral musicians stamping in unison for some time. The sound of marching feet dies out, as if into the distance, perhaps providing a bridge into the War Requiem which followed. There’s a lot going on in Hour of Lead and I was left feeling a desire to hear this intriguing work again.

Composer Eve de Castro-Robinson

“…I just write what I write.”

Photo supplied

De Castro-Robinson, now 68, has experienced pain in her life, emotional, psychological and physical, as have most people who live for six decades or more. During a composer residency at the At the World’s Edge (AWE) Festival in the Queenstown Lakes district in October this year, and again in our recent interview, she spoke of the revelation she had when looking back on her earlier works, several of which were performed at that Festival.

She admits openly that composing has become harder as she has aged. “I don’t have the driven sonic spirit I used to have.” Asking the question “Why don’t I write like that now?”, de Castro-Robinson refers to works like the gritty, intense Tumbling Strains for violin and cello, performed at AWE. Composed in 1992, the piece was reimagined in 2017 by cellist Ashley Brown for de Castro-Robinson’s album The Gristle of Knuckles. In the latter he played, she has said, “as if sawing the cello in half”.

The answer to her question came “with a big light that flashed in my head”, during a talk about her music at AWE. “It’s to do with chemicals. I’m bi-polar, so I’ve been on medication for years now, mood stabilisers, anti-depressants, which just blunt the mood. But also, on the other side, getting older has enabled me to free up and not worry so much about what people think. When I realised that, I felt a bit better about it; I just write what I write.”

De Castro-Robinson often begins the creative process with a title “and then I try to imbue the work with that thought.” Amongst her 90-odd compositions are engaging names like Split the Lark, Chaos of Delight and a pink-lit phase.

Another of her new works, Earth’s Eye, had its premiere at AWE 2024. Her title came from Thoreau’s book Walden, in which he wrote: “A lake is the landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature. It is earth's eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature.”

That premiere had a magical setting, the performers on stage with Lake Wanaka and the mountains behind them in the small Rippon Winery venue. A quartet for clarinet, violin, viola and cello, Earth’s Eye struck me as an example of de Castro-Robinson’s typical organisation of gestures and dramatic events in time, using colour and texture. “I’ve always joked,” she says “that I’m not very good at the basics of music, melody, harmony and rhythm; maybe I’m not a born composer. I’ve got quite a good sense of timing, and in Earth’s Eye, I used a sort of rhythmic unison, rather like Messiaen did in his Quartet for the End of Time.” Visiting star British clarinettist Julian Bliss was joined by AWE Director and violinist Justine Cormack, violist Bryony Gibson-Cornish and cellist Sterling Elliot for a great premiere performance.

Eve de Castro-Robinson and performers after the premiere of Earth’s Eye in Wanaka

(From left) De Castro-Robinson, Julian Bliss (clarinet), Sterling Elliot (cello), Bryony Gibson-Cornish (viola) and Justine Cormack (violin).

Photo supplied by AWE Festival

The disinhibiting factor of age has enabled the composer to explore other areas, too. De Castro-Robinson realised a long-held dream when she performed with the group From Scratch in their recent 50th anniversary celebrations; she also recently took the stage in a small bar for her first stand-up comedy performance, and is taking acting lessons. She was taken aback when her acting teacher declared “Eve, you’re fearless!”. But that fearlessness is there in her music, and the stamping feet at the end of Hour of Lead, she says, are about power and “a touch of defiance”.  

“My music may come across as powerful, but it’s not negative,” she says. “It’s not really la-di-dah middle of the road spinning notes kind of music, either. Maybe it’s a bit like my personality. I don’t want to shock or impress; it’s all about reaching someone on a deeper level.”  

Eve de Castro-Robinson’s composition Hour of Lead was premiered by Orchestra Wellington in the concert “A Modern Hero”, conducted by Marc Taddei, on December 7, 2024.  You can read a review of Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem, also performed in that concert, here.