Southern Cross Soloists
Australia
4MBS10

It takes good degree of courage to name one’s CD AUSTRALIA: on the cover in capital letters with the stars of the ensemble’s name, in blue and white. Inside the booklet, Paul Dean’s (the Southern Cross Soloists’ director) opening remarks are only slightly less confident: ‘This CD is… I feel, a glowing representation of the brilliance and variety of Australian composition.’

The composers whose works comprise the CD – Paul Stanhope, Roy Agnew, Mary Mageau, Alison Bauld, Dulcie Holland, Richard Mills, Gordon Kerry, Stephen Stanfield, Vincent Plush – though familiar enough names, are not as well-known as Sculthorpe and Edwards, suggesting that visitors from overseas aren’t the ensemble’s target demographic.

The voices of Edwards and Sculthorpe are certainly the loudest in Stanhope’s music. His opening piece, Songs for the Shadowland, immediately establishes as strong sense of modal harmony which is not un-Edwardsian whereby unstable notes move flickeringly to more stable pitches. Stanhope’s rhythmic language here owes much to Sculthorpe in its gentle undulations. The texts for this piece are by the poet Oodgeroo, a writer with whom I am unfamiliar; unfortunately the words are most difficult to discern, and I would have been grateful for printed lyrics.

Stanhope’s other piece on the disc is Morning Star II. This is one of his earlier works, composed in 1993, and arranged for the Southern Cross Soloists in 1999. Its character is lively (again one hears Stanhope’s response to Edwards, especially in the opening) though the ecstatic state (a device that Sculthorpe frequently uses to great effect) to which the ending aspires is not supported by the overly simplistic musical material. However, the performances of both Stanhope’s pieces are of the highest order. In the liner notes, Roger Covell writes that ‘there are unmistakable influences from the special manner of some Australian Aboriginal music.’ Whilst I acknowledge what Stanhope is trying to achieve, these two pieces seem too distanced from an engagement with Aboriginal music for this aspect to be of deep significance.

Bauld’s Mad Moll is undeniably striking. A monody for solo voice, it portrays ‘the melancholy world of a retarded spinster [Moll], trapped like a maimed stick‑insect on the verandah of her derelict house’. This piece was composed in the early 1970s during Bauld’s PhD studies at the University of York where she encountered soprano Jane Manning. Margaret Schindler’s performance here is decisive as she executes the entire text with a singularly focused earnestness. Amid other compositions on this release which err towards the bland, Mad Moll brings a very welcome eccentricity.

On all tracks the recordings are generally of high quality, though there is a very slight, but constant hum which sounds a little like an air‑conditioning during a Queensland summer. Perhaps this is sound of Australia?

The Southern Cross Soloists are all accomplished musicians who make the most of the music that they perform.

© Michael Hooper