Human significance
Iranian Reyhaneh Jabbari
…her last letter inspired a poem and a symphony.
Poet Vincent O’Sullivan and composer Ross Harris have formed one of the most fruitful collaborations in New Zealand performing arts. Together they’ve created two operas, two symphonies, three song cycles, the semi-staged Requiem for the Fallen, If Blood be the Price for brass band and chorus and FACE for orchestra. All are powerful works portraying searing events in global history through deeply personal stories of anguish and love.
A recent release pairs Harris’s 6th Symphony, subtitled Last Letter, and the WW1 centenary piece, FACE, both performed by the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra. Last Letter takes its title from O’Sullivan’s poem inspired by the story of Reyhaneh Jabbari, an Iranian woman condemned to death for killing the policeman who had raped her, and her letter to her mother.
"When I read about that intelligent, brave young woman's execution and her marvellous letter I thought at once it had the emotional expansiveness and human significance that would give Ross a wide canvas to work on and offer him the kind of depth he explores so finely," says O'Sullivan. Three more poems exploring tragic themes of loss in mother-daughter relationships completed the set.
Poet Vincent O’Sullivan
Written in Harris’s 70th year, this 6th Symphony offers some of the composer’s most transparent and accomplished orchestral writing. Four poetic settings, movingly sung by Australian mezzo-soprano Fiona Campbell, maintain emotional distance from horrific stories, the musical surface beautiful, compassionate and gentle in dark timbres. In three linking orchestral interludes the composer unleashes his rage, chilling at times or furious as in the frightening percussion and snarling brass of the final interlude.
Composer Ross Harris
FACE, Symphonic Songs and Choruses, was written by O’Sullivan and Harris in 2018 near the end of WW1 commemorations and looked beyond the war years “at the people who had to live on with injury or affliction” explains Harris. The formidable yet tender symphonic work was premiered simultaneously in Auckland and London by the APO and the BBC Symphony Orchestra, honouring both the victims of devastating injuries from trench warfare and New Zealand surgeon Sir Harold Gillies, a pioneer in reconstructive surgery.
FACE and Symphony No 6 Last Letter Ross Harris (composer) Vincent O’Sullivan (poetry and text), Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra, Giordano Bellincampi and Antony Hermus (conductors) (Naxos) Available from Marbecks
This CD review was first published in the NZ Listener, issue March 6 2021