3 CDs were found that mentioned selleck

The Goldner String Quartet is the string players of the Australia Ensemble (resident at the University of NSW). This is an historic set of CDs, making Sculthorpe's considerable oeuve in this genre availabel for the first time on CD.

They say there is nothing new under the sun. New works of art challenge this notion. In this new piano recording by Ian Holtham, all the works, commissioned from his Melbourne composer colleagues, are responses to major works in the piano literature. Something new has arisen, phoenix-like, out of something old.

The remarkable works presented here are all world premier recordings. Their genesis lies in a relationship with canonic piano repertoire ranging from Scarlatti to Liszt. In all eight works composers from the present use as their compositional starting point composer models who have been central to the world of the piano for aeons. Eight quite different compositional viewpoints also present a snapshot of the state of contemporary composition in Melbourne.

Included in this CD are the four new works which constitute what Holtham has called the ‘Melbourne Schubert Project’: a set of musical reactions from the four most senior members of the University of Melbourne’s composition staff to Schubert’s last piano sonata. As a group, the four pieces essentially present a twenty-first century response to one of the most beloved of all piano compositions.

The Prospect and Bower of Bliss presents two song settings by Australian composer Johanna Selleck of poetry by the English poet and dramatist Aphra Behn (1640-1689) and Melbourne-born poet Graeme Ellis (1944-). Although separated by time and geography, the different styles of Behn’s and Ellis’s poetry are nevertheless linked by the vividness with which they both portray matters closest to the heart and create a sense of immediacy, emotional depth, and connection with nature. These themes are integral to Selleck’s personal compositional style and are reflected in her settings of the poems.

Aphra Behn is recognised as one of the most influential dramatists of the seventeenth century and is also known as the first professional female writer, who was able to make her living entirely from writing. She was considered scandalous in her own time, with no topic off-limits, whether religious, political or sexual. The Prospect and Bower of Bliss explores ideas about love and sexuality in an idyllic pastoral setting.

In contrast, Graeme Ellis’s Seven Tanka borrows from the ancient Japanese art of haiku. Tanka is a related poetic form with 5 lines as compared to 3 lines for haiku and similarly built upon lines of 5 and 7 syllables. Ellis was inspired to compose his Seven Tanka when he heard Merlyn Quaife sing Selleck’s Songs of the Earth and Sky for soprano and percussion. Hence, a circular pattern of influence between poet and composer emerges.

Selleck (1959-) is a composer, flautist and musicologist. Her compositions have been performed by some of the most renowned performers in Australia and internationally, including the performers featured on this CD: Merlyn Quaife and Judith Dodsworth (sopranos), Caroline Almonte (piano), Arwen Johnston (percussion), and Anne Norman (shakuhachi), each of whom excels in both technique and artistry in their interpretations of the music and poetry on this unique CD.