Gillian Whitehead: Shadows Crossing Water
Rattle

Many words come to mind as I listen to Shadows Crossing Water, a seventy-five-minute, career-spanning collection of music by New Zealand-based composer Gillian Whitehead, but perhaps none more than authenticity. Free of theatrics or cheap effects, the material is marked by purity of vision and performed with immense poise by the Stamic Quartet (including first violinist Jindrich Pazdera), oboist Vilém Veverka, and pianist Patricia Goodson. Eight pieces are presented, from Three Improvisations for Solo Oboe, composed in 1963 when she was an undergraduate at Victoria University of Wellington, to the most recent, 2016's Shadows Cross the Water. Though she's written operas and works for orchestra, choir, and other large ensembles, the Rattle release emphasizes her chamber side, with a number of pieces solo works for oboe and piano and others featuring different instrument configurations.

Whitehead, who studied with Peter Maxwell Davies before building a reputation as a freelance composer in Europe and then teacher at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, creates music that doesn't slot easily into any particular style. Instead, her compositions are organic, highly personalized creations that, in certain cases on Shadows Crossing Water, developed in response to geographical locations and circumstances she found herself in over the years. The mysterious Clouds Over Mata-au, for example, was written during a residency when she was staying in a house high above the Mata-au (Clutha) river in Central Otago, whereas the two primary ideas in Arapatiki derive from the ebb and flow of the tide and the call of the korimako (bellbird). In a few other instances, compositions were produced as commissions, Tom's Serenade for Ann Morris, for example, and Torua, which violinist Hilary Hahn commissioned for her 27 Encores project.

Exuding drama, discovery, and excitement, Whitehead's compositions are adventurous and compelling, whether presented in solo form or in small-group arrangements. Alternating between dance-like and meditative episodes, her haunting Three Improvisations for Solo Oboe, for instance, sounds as fresh today as when she wrote it more than half a century ago. Still, the multiple hues the different instruments bring to Tom's Serenade for Ann Morris and Shadows Cross the Water help make them stand out. The pairing of the oboe's fluttering, bird-like cry with strings in the former generates a powerful impression, especially when their contrasting timbres are accentuated vividly during the fourteen-minute performance. All six musicians are called upon for Shadows Cross the Water, which Whitehead composed during the time of the seventieth anniversary of the arrival of New Zealand's first refugees (700-plus Polish children) and got her reflecting on the horrible impact of such dislocation in wartime. Pensive and even eerie moments arise during this stirring exploration, which at moments conjures the image of boats packed with anxious children drifting slowly by night through the mist.

November 2018