International Attention for Waikato Composer’s Latest Work

5 April 2013

International Attention for Waikato Composer’s Latest Work

The latest CD from composer Martin Lodge has been praised in the March 2013 issue of Gramophone magazine.

Founded in 1923 and based in London, Gramophone is widely considered the most authoritative journal on recorded classical music.

Martin Lodge is an Associate Professor of Music at the University of Waikato.

Surveying current developments in the music of New Zealand and Australia, Gramophone writer William Yeoman selects Toru – chamber music by Martin Lodge as one of three recent CDs that reveal important directions in contemporary New Zealand music.

The other mentions are CD’s by Dame Gillian Whitehead and Eve de Castro-Robinson.

The Gramophone article suggests that some of the major themes in New Zealand classical music continue to be an ongoing interaction between Western European art music and indigenous music, along with the experience of the unique landscapes of New Zealand.

Specifically noted by Yeoman is the significance of Western and Māori elements, and landscape, in Lodge’s works on Toru.

The ‘extraordinary playing’ of taonga puoro by University of Waikato research associate in music Richard Nunns is praised and Martin Lodge’s musical style is characterised as ‘by turns lyrical, ecstatic and admitting of a flexible chiaroscuro’.

Performers on the CD are drawn from New Zealand, including University of Waikato Music staff Katherine Austin, Rachael Griffiths-Hughes, Lara Hall and James Tennant, as well as from North and South America and Europe.

Stellar young cello virtuoso Santiago Canon Valencia features in a piece called Nightwind, especially written for him and fellow cellist Edward King. Toru – chamber music by Martin Lodge is issued by Atoll records of Auckland.

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