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David Lumsdaine's complete music for solo piano

The complete piano music by David Lumsdaine is now available on CD. The music is performed by Mark Knoop and it is out on Tall Poppies. The CD contains several works, the first of which, Kelly Ground was composed in 1966. The other compositions are Ruhe sanfte, sanfte ruh' (1974), Cambewarra (1980) and the short Six Postcard Pieces from 1980. It's an extraordinary collection that shows the depth and breadth of Lumsdaine's composition. His facility as a composer for the piano is evident in abundance.

The reviews have all been very positive. Peter McCallum, writes in the Sydney Morning Herald that "David Lumsdaine belongs to that group of imaginative Australian modernists who adopted and quickly moved beyond the postwar European language. Broad-ranging in intellectual scope, his music remains more deeply inspired by the Australian landscape than perhaps any other composer. Kelly Ground (1966) is an extended cyclic meditation on Ned Kelly's last day, reminiscent of David Malouf's The Conversations At Curlow Creek. Ruhe sanfte, sanfte ruh' brings similarly searching reflectiveness to the final chorus of Bach's St Matthew Passion.
Cambewarra is a great Australian landscape, its background of birdsong recalling the extended-tone poems of Messiaen's Catalogue Of The Birds. Six Postcard Pieces compresses the timescale to fleeting miniatures, which, like Chopin's Preludes or Beethoven's Bagatelles, simply announce an idea and then leave it.

Mark Knoop is a dedicated advocate of cogent precision. Occasionally one could expand the range of tonal colour but the concentration is compelling."

Andrew Clements, writing in The Guardian [read the full review]:

"Though David Lumsdaine has been based in Britain since the early 1950s, his music has remained firmly rooted in the history, culture and landscape of his native Australia. It's invigorating to hear these three major piano works again, especially in such accomplished performances by Mark Knoop; all were important landmarks in Lumsdaine's development through the 1960s and 70s, when his music was evolving rapidly."

David Bollard's review from Music Forum, August 2009:

"Because Lumsdaine has spent most of his life in England, some would say that he cannot truly be considered an Australian composer in the usual sense. Yet he strongly feels to be so, has made frequent trips back here, features Australian landscape and history in the titles of various works, and has shown a keen interest in local ornithology by making various field recordings of Australian bird calls. This CD presents his entire solo piano music for the first time, with three major works (including two world premiere recordings), and will add significantly to his reputation as one of our most important composers.

"The late Don Banks described Kelly Ground (1966) to me years ago as a fine piece, and in fact it contains keyboard gestures similar to those in Banks's own Pezzo Drammatico and Richard Meale's Coruscations. I suspect it has not been too frequently performed and never recorded before simply because of the formidable challenges it poses to performer and listener alike. The material stems from an intended opera about the bushranger Ned Kelly, a project subsequently abandoned. It is largely organised serially in sequential cycles and strophes, and in some respects sounds like much of the post-war European avant-garde music played frequently at festivals of the period, such as Darmstadt and Donaueschingen. Consequently, it now inevitably seems a little dated, but the presence of a powerful musical mind always predominates. The second and third cycles, which represent Kelly's hanging, are especially moving: elegiac, mesmeric and utterly individual.

"Then Ruhe sanfte, sanfte ruh' (1974), to my mind the highlight of the disc. Described by the composer as "a meditation on the last chorus of Bach's St Matthew Passion", it is cast in three sections of diminishing durations. Although Bach's score is never quoted literally, it provides a fundamental atmosphere, 'a motivic and harmonic web' (Lumsdaine's words) from which the piece evolves. The way whereby the ominous opening C minor chord constantly returns in a stream-of-consciousness manner lends the first movement an extraordinary sense of suspense; the same procedure also appears in the brief finale. Like Kelly Ground, this piece features haunting bell-sounds – echoes of Martinu, Messiaen and others.

"The third offering is Cambewarra (1980, a three-movement piece demonstrating the composer's increasing interest in Zen Buddhism. Much of the often complex material utilizes Lumsdaine's beloved birdcalls (Messiaen again!) from the region of that name near Kangaroo Valley, New South Wales, prefiguring certain structural processes evident in Cambewarra Mountain, one of the birdsong recordings mentioned earlier. In particular, this relates to overlapping techniques and the ways whereby structural freedom can therefore result. The first movement is essentially tranquil, the second becomes far more active, and the close of the last movement reaches an obsessive climax, with frenetic repeated notes and complex figurations. For my taste the piece seems somewhat overlong (31' 02"), but contains absolutely breathtaking technical and sonic effects: not for the faint-hearted listener!

"In complete contrast, the disc concludes with Six Postcard Pieces (1995), a short collection of delightful miniatures with traditional titles (March, Toccata, etc.).

"I feel this is an important CD. The music is strong and always commands the listener's respect; the performances by Mark Knoop — Australian pianist/conductor living in London — are technically and emotionally compelling; the sound quality is pleasingly ambient; the presentation is appealing; the overall timing (almost 80' ) is generous; and the annotations (mainly) by Michael Hooper — Sydney mandolinist/musicologist currently researching Lumsdaine's music at York University — are exceptionally insightful and detailed. Very highly recommended."

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