Over the weekend I was fortunate to visit Cambridge University for a performance of a short choral piece that I wrote for choir a few years ago. This performance was held at Trinity College Chapel and conducted by the senior organ scholar, Augustine Cox. It formed part of a concert celebrating music by British and Australian composers.
Australian composer and pianist Wendy Hiscocks, who was born in Wollongong, is currently artistic director of CAM, or Celebrating Australian Music. Wendy organised this concert under the auspices of CAM and Trinity College Music Society, with further support from publisher Wirripang, as well as The Pitfield Trust, The British Music Society Charitable Trust, and kind permission from the Master and Fellows of Trinity College.
Wendy studied composition with the celebrated Australian composer Peter Sculthorpe at the University of Sydney. Her music has been performed across the world by many highly regarded soloists and orchestras, and it has also been featured at the King’s Lynn and Aldeburgh Festivals (UK), Spitalfields Festival (London), and at the Australian Festival of Chamber Music, the Amadeus Festival (Geneva), and broadcast on Radio Suisse Romande, Radio France, ABC Radio and TV, BBC Radio 3 and the British Film Institute. She completed a doctorate in the music of Arthur Benjamin, a subject which is now the focus of a biography she has written and on whom she has lectured and presented an ABC radio documentary.
Saturday’s concert programme was named after the first piece, Pax Musica, written by British composer Thomas Pitfield, and the concert presented a mixture of both secular and sacred works exploring themes such as love, hope and praise. Selected texts frequently refer to birds, both their flight and their song, a topic which has long inspired many writers and musicians. Composers whose music featured in the programme alongside Thomas Pitfield included British composer Michael Hurd, and Australian composers Arthur Benjamin and Stephen Adams, the latter of whose performance of Sydney Dreaming, was a UK Premiere. Wendy’s piece for choir, solo violin and organ, Love Falls, was also a UK premiere, as was her captivating work for unaccompanied choir Graces.
My piece, Hope Is The Thing (for SATB), was written in 2020 and originally commissioned by a semi-professional choir based on the Isle of Wight. As the pandemic struck, the choir disbanded, but I continued to write the piece as a symbol of hope in an uncertain world. The selected poem, written by American poet Emily Dickinson (1830 – 1886), reflects my interest in highlighting important work by women in the arts. This performance was the ‘world premiere’, and you can hear it by clicking on the link below.
