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

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first performed the work in a radio broadcast from IYA on Wednesday
15 January 1946. It was visiting pianist Lili Kraus who gave the first
public performance of the work in Christchurch on 8 April 1947,- and in
November of that year it was performed in London by Colin Horsley at a
recital in Wigmore Hall. C.F.B. in The Press wrote of Lili Kraus's
performance:
"[The second half] ••• opened with Douglas Lilburn's
Sonatina which has a freshness suggestive of out of
doors. Lili Kraus repeated the work as a tribute to
a New Zealand composer, and graciously joined with
the audience in their appreciation of it." 14
Chaconne, originally entitled Theme and Variations for Piano,
was also written later in 1946.
Chaconne was Lilburn's attempt at a
'show-piece' for piano, conceived in terms of the virtuosi pieces of the
nineteenth century.
Once World War II was over and New Zealand returned to its
normal peace-time existence, the Government and the National Broadcasting
Service resumed plans for a full-time professional orchestra. Building
once again on the nucleus of strings in the National Broadcasting Service
Sring Orchestra, the National Orchestra of New Zealand's Broadcasting
Service was formed and met together for the first time in October of
1946. 15 Professor Shelley!6 during the planning for the New Zealand
Centennial Celebrations, had made it clear that the formation of the
National Centennial Orchestra marked the beginning of the next one
hundred years of musical endeavour rather than a climax of the past
century. However, for a while after the formation of the National
Orchestra in 1946 it seemed, to the critics of the orchestra, that
Shelley's optimism was unfounded.
The centralisation of musical resources depleted musical
resources in other main- centres, robbing them of their best performers
and teachers. The Government's plan to compensate for this by sending
orchestral members back to the other main centres for part of the year
14 C.F.B •• The Press 9 April 1947:9.
15 Peter Downes and Peter Harcourt, Voices in the Air Wellington,
Methuen Publications in association with Radio NeW-Zealand, 1976: 134.
16 Then director of the National Broadcasting Service and Chairman of
the National Centennial Music Committee.