Eve de Castro-Robinson sounds a warning
Clarion, composer Eve de Castro-Robinson’s newest work, is a call to arms. A chamber concerto for trumpet, it sounds a strident warning about the global climate emergency while lamenting what is already lost. Written for Scottish-based New Zealand trumpet virtuoso Bede Williams and including conch shells fashioned as pūtātara by Williams to take the message “across the oceans”, the world premiere of Clarion took place at the University of St Andrews in February. The New Zealand premiere followed soon afterwards in a Spiegeltent concert of de Castro-Robinson’s music in the 2020 Auckland Arts Festival. [See short review below.]
Fittingly, the work is, in de Castro-Robinson’s words, “particularly urgent” in style. “In these times of crisis,” she explains, “my thoughts go to my son and the next generation and that produces a kind of bodily urgency. What can a composer do about climate change but reflect that through her sonic output? As a younger composer I was more interested in experimenting with purely sonic environments but as I’ve got older I have limited patience for creating something that doesn’t have a punch to it.”
When I talked to de Castro-Robinson she was on the brink of travel to Scotland for Clarion’s premiere and confessed to feeling both vulnerable and confident about her new work. “When you’ve just written something and haven’t heard it - and neither has anyone else - there’s a kind of perilous tightrope balancing between those two poles. I’ve had that my whole life. The frailty of the damned thing! When you talk closely to any composer you’ll find they’re not as confident as they seem on the surface. But last night I played Clarion through and thought ‘Crikey! This is going to be good.’ When my own music gives me a thrill, I know I’m on to something.”
The Gristle of Knuckles, a genre-defying collaborative album built from re-imagings of her music by top improvisers such as Don McGlashan and Nathan Haines, won de Castro-Robinson the Tui in the Classical category of the New Zealand Music Awards in 2018. The Auckland Arts Festival concert includes live performances of two of the Gristle tracks, singer Mere Boynton’s powerful version of the vocal lament hau and a fist-clenching Stumbling Trains from cellist Ashley Brown, who plays, says the composer, "as if he's sawing the cello in half".
De Castro-Robinson began her working life as a graphic designer, earning a diploma at the Auckland Technical Institute after various jobs as newspaper paste-up artist, truffle-maker, and on the forecourt of a petrol station. She played piano, cello and drums but didn’t think of herself as a composer till she met her older colleague John Rimmer after enrolling in music at the university in her mid-twenties. “John was very influential because he could see that, though I didn’t have the technical and theoretical chops, I had drive and creative intensity.” Did the graphic design skills influence the composing? “It’s all one, the same sensibility. I think and feel creatively – that’s the guts of it.”
Now 63, de Castro-Robinson acknowledges she’s at a career watershed. Taking early retirement from her position as a professor of music at the University of Auckland has been both a “shock to the system” and wonderfully freeing. “I’ve been in that place 25 years lecturing plus a few years earlier tutoring and three music degrees including a doctorate before that. I’m not “institionalised” but it’s a long time - I’m at home with that community I belong to.”
As an outspoken critic of changes at the University of Auckland’s School of Music last year, de Castro-Robinson found herself at odds with the university hierarchy. Now, in leaving, the freedom of a free-lance creative life is appealing. “I still love the university, the people, the flurry of engaged minds, stimulating conversations with colleagues, beautiful physical environment and the kids as I call them. The rewards of teaching are precious. But I’m finding my way out of confinement and the ridiculous bureaucracy of a university system - and my own reaction to it.”
With the two Clarion premieres over and having cleared out her university office, what’s next for de Castro-Robinson? “In the back of my mind I’m conjuring up all kinds of projects and collaborations and looking at possible residencies. I’m back to being free-lance like most people in my composing community – but the days are moving far too quickly for me to make a plan.”
An earlier version of this article was published in NZ Listener 21 March, 2020.
Some thoughts after listening to Clarion
On the brink of the COVID-19 lockdown in New Zealand, I regretfully abandoned my planned air travel to Auckland to hear the NZ premiere of Clarion. But recently, courtesy of SOUNZ, Centre for New Zealand music, who filmed the concert, I was able to experience this richly-layered and passionate new work on video.
In Clarion, de Castro-Robinson first conjures oceans and birds with otherworldly shimmering orchestral sounds. Bede Williams’ forthright trumpet erupts from the stillness. I hear a New Zealand voice calling from the sonic world of Douglas Lilburn, who created a musical language for this country two generations earlier than Clarion’s composer. Poignant voices sing from across the world in fragments of the hymn, Abide with Me, while the pūtātara brings a sense of ancient and plaintive sounds of Aotearoa.
The Auckland Chamber Orchestra brings the music alive under the sure guidance of its director, Peter Scholes. Williams’ virtuosity is evident throughout and particularly in an extended “cadenza” in the final movement. Here, he intersperses trumpet sounds with chanting, the Latin word Eia meaning Lo! See! Look! Quick! as the composer explains. The whole orchestra takes up the vocal chant, underpinned by passionate drumming, creating a sense that the earth itself is calling out in pain and entreaty. Elegiac violin and muted trumpet bring the work to a close with the hymn tune Dear Lord and Father of Mankind by Hubert Parry. “I’ve always loved the simple final line,” says de Castro-Robinson. “O still small voice of calm. It brings a lump to the throat.” The final moments of this deeply moving work are a gently tolling bell.