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

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Lilburn for his composition of S~phony No.3. It was an imaginative
and unprecedented gesture of tribute to a New Zealand composer. Later,
in 1967, the symphony was to receive further distinction in being
accepted for publication by Faber Music Ltd,13 only the third of
Lilburn's compositions to be so f~ted by a major publishing house. 14
Not only did Symphony No.3 mark the culminating point of all that
had come before in Lilburn's work, but also it marked the virtual
terminating point of his writing for traditional instruments.
Apart
from a number of scores of incidental music, only Sonatina No.2, ~
Short Pieces for Piano, and a few short works for piano and for guitar
followed.
The Sonatina No.2 was dedicated to Margaret Nielson, who had
joined the staff of the music department at Victoria Untversity College
in 1960.
Nielson was to become one of the foremost protagonists of
Lilburn's compositions, performing his piano music on innumerable
occasions.
Sonatina No.~ was premiered by Margaret Nielsen at a concert
organised by the Wellington Society for Contemporary Music held in the
Music Room, Victoria University of Wellington on 22 July 1962. 15 It
was given a further performance by Nielsen later in the year on
2 November as part of a concert of piano music by New Zealand composers,
all performed by Nielson, at the Wellington Art Gallery. Lilburn's
Sonata for piano (1949)was also included in the programme.
'S.R.' in a
percipient review for The Zealandia found, when comparing Lilburn's two
compositions, that:
" ••• Sonatina No.2 is a very different thing
indeed. Since his third symphony, Mr Lilburn's
writing has become much more concerned with
linear qualities, less dependent on rhythmic
figuration to give it vitality, more "open"
harmonically, and very sensitive to the
structural values of the serialist composers.
The Sonatina is beautifully written for the
instrument - mo-st idiomatic altogether - and
it makes much use of the new awareness -of its
textural possibilities pioneered by Debussy and
12 Worthy honour for N.Z. composer. The Dominion 3 January 1963.
13 Music first. The Press' 31 August 1967. The publication of S~phony
No.3 occurred the following year, 1968.
14 Diversions had been published in 1963 by Oxford University Press, and
String Trio in 1953 by Hinrichsen.
15 Programme to the concert.