The beginnings and development of a New Zealand music: The life ...

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intolerable - to spend one's life keeping up
with the Darmstadt Jones's."74
Meanwhile, public interest in, and acceptance of, Lilburn's
orchestral compositions was growing.
Relatively speaking; although there
had never been any difficulty in obtaining performances of the chamber
works, Lilburn's orchestral scores in the main languished in the shelves
of the Broadcasting Service's library.
To be fair; though, as pointed out in an earlier chapter, the
orchestra in its infancy was still exploring and absorbing the standard
repertoire of orchestral music.
In addition to this, it was involved
in travel of up to 10,000 miles a year, touring not only the main cities
in New Zealand, but also many smaller towns. 75 The time available to
explore works outside the standard repertoire was small and the risks
of committing valuable rehearsal time to exploring 'untried' works by
New Zealand composers must have seemed too great to justify.
From 1955, this situation changed, partly because the orchestra
had reached ten years of age and was past its infancy, and partly because
of the arrival of a succession of two conductors with a strong interest in
fostering New Zealand composition.
Firstly James Robertson, and then,
more importantly, John Hopkins, started to systematically clear the
backlog of 'untried' New Zealand compositions, particularly those by
Lilburn.
Consider the achievements in this field of Robertson and Hopkins.
In 1955 James Robertson gave five performances of the Festival Overture,
a work that had not been performed since 1940.
In 1956 he premiered
A Birthday Offering and gave it two performances the following year.
Song of the Antipodes was given its first hearing in eleven years with
two performances in 1956, and Suite for Orchestra its first performance
by the National Orcnestra in 1957.
John Hopkins's record is even more laudable.
In 1958 he gave the
first performance for seven years of Symphony No.1 and the first public
performance of Symphony No.2 in 1959.
He gave five performances of
Festival Overture between the years of 1959 and 1962, and the same
number of performances of the Aotearoa Overture between 1960 and 1963.
As well as this, he gave three performances of Suite for Orchestra in
1958 and 1959. The eight-month period between November 1958 and June
1959 was the height of this activity by Hopkins, when he conducted the
74 Douglas Lilburn, University of Otago Open Lecture p.17.
75 E.C. Simpson, A Survey of the Arts in New Zealand, The Wellington
Chamber Music Society, 1961:6.