John Psathas: Voices at the End

If you missed the recent broadcast of this work on RNZ Concert, watch the excellent film of the Auckland Arts Festival world premiere by SOUNZ Centre for New Zealand Music – details below.

“Six grand pianos is crazy!” says composer John Psathas of his work Voices at the End, broadcast recently by RNZ Concert. “Plus, an immersive backing track, complex technology, each pianist with an in-ear click track – it’s a very complicated way to share a heart-felt message.”

Commissioned by the UK multi-piano ensemble Piano Circus, Voices at the End was trialed with them by Psathas during his 2018 composer residency at Snape Maltings in England. For Psathas, the piece is much more than the music. “It’s not simply abstract music, which I often write,” he says. “There’s a message, through texts, sung and spoken.”

New Zealand pianists Michael Houstoun, Stephen de Pledge, Somi Kim, Jian Liu, Sarah Watkins and Liam Wooding played in the world premiere at Auckland Arts Festival in 2020. “It was wonderful to hear the work’s message being communicated and received,” Psathas says. “And it was a dream team, high quality musicians, a great venue, a whole team of people aiming as high as I was.”

Composer John Psathas

“…a complicated way to share a heartfelt message.”

Voices at the End was inspired by the space documentary, Planetary, released on Earth Day 2015. “In the film,” Psathas explains, “environmental activist Joanna Macy suggested three stories to choose from to make sense of our world.”  Those stories, Business as Usual, The Great Unravelling and, more hopefully, The Great Turning, form the three movements of Voices at the End, depicting a journey from an industrial growth society to one that is life sustaining.  The work opens with a Prologue and ends with Chrysalis, an Epilogue.

Musically the beauty and variety of the work are powerfully compelling. Atmospheric sounds set the scene for gentle, repetitive and overlapping piano entries and momentum builds through the movements to brilliant, explosive climaxes of multi-layered counterpoint. Spoken and sung sections suggest universal themes, from the menacing, seductive Honey of the Prologue to the yearning love song of The Great Unravelling. Chrysalis is genre-defying, risking pop cliché but ultimately creating a joyous conclusion.

With the pianos arranged in a circle, the premiere performance was also a visual spectacle, captured in an imaginative film by SOUNZ.   

Voices at the End by John Psathas with Michael Houstoun, Stephen de Pledge, Somi Kim, Jian Liu, Sarah Watkins and Liam Wooding (pianos) Graham Kennedy (sound).
Recorded at the Auckland Arts Festival in 2020. A SOUNZ film of the performance can be viewed at www.bit.ly/VoicesAtTheEnd

You’ll find more information, audio and video links here.

This short article was first published in the NZ Listener issue September 28, 2021.