Moonstone: music from Aotearoa for viola and piano
Robert Ashworth (viola) and Sarah Watkins (piano) - their new album a generous gift to the listener.
Photo credit: Lydia Sewell
The warm, alto voice of the viola often adds richness inside musical textures but its many-coloured solo voice is seldom heard. Composer Gareth Farr says it has always been a favourite of his, praising its ability “to sing in its upper register and produce warm or punchy lower notes.”
Farr is one of six New Zealand composers commissioned to write new works by Auckland-based violist Robert Ashworth and pianist Sarah Watkins. These fine new pieces have just been released by Rattle as part of a two-volume set by the duo, the first volume devoted to two older works, a movement composed in the late 19th century by Australian-New Zealand composer Alfred Hill, and Moonstone, by Dame Gillian Whitehead, which gives its name to the release.
Composition in Aotearoa has travelled far from the romanticism of Hill’s singing melodic style and tonal accompaniment. The four movements of Whitehead’s Moonstone, composed in Britain in the late 1970’s, are also of a very different era, uncompromisingly atonal and perhaps a little fragmented for 21st century ears. The composer herself has moved a long way from this spare 20th century modernism.
MOONSTONE
…an album rich in contrasts.
The album is rich in other contrasts. A fortissimo, assertive drama in the outer sections of Chris Cree Brown’s Dream Lines has an unrelenting nightmarish quality, the pace slowing for a central viola solo. 21st century minimalism features here and elsewhere, including in Ross Harris’s gently unfolding Viola and Piano, where occasional edgy, insistent repetition punctuates soaring viola, resolving in an ethereal ending.
The works explore many viola styles, melodic, pizzicato, strummed and double-stopped against a full range of piano timbres. David Hamilton’s appealing Alchemy is also minimalist, skillfully using pace and subtle harmonic shifts. Farr’s Ngake and Whātaitai intersperses romantic moments with an ominous narrative about mythical duelling taniwha in Wellington Harbour. Miroir by Leonie Holmes begins slowly, exploring the beauty of viola tone above lovely piano flourishes, building to an impassioned duet.
All six commissions respond to the accomplishments of two fine performers. Sarah Ballard’s sarva-ātmanah., the title a Sanskrit term, places romantic viola against a big rolling piano accompaniment. She describes it as “a gift to Robert and Sarah.” The whole album is a generous gift to the listener.
MOONSTONE Robert Ashworth (viola) Sarah Watkins (piano) Music by New Zealand composers (Rattle) Available here
This review was first published in the NZ Listener issue July 23, 2022