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

87
entitled Song of the Antipodes (retitled Song of. Islands twenty years
later). It was premiered by the National Orchestra in the
Wellington Town Hall on Wednesday 20 August 1947 in the final concert of
the orchestra's inaugural season. 22 The conductor was Warwick Braithwaite,
the conductor of the Aotearoa Overture at its premiere performance in the
New Zealand Centenary Matinee in London.
The reviews of Song of the Antipodes were favourable.
Music Ho,
for example, had the following comments to make about the work's first
performance:
"Song of the Antipodes is neither a tone-poem
nor a symphony. The song part of th~ title
refers to the chorale-like theme which gives
coherence to the work while Antipodes with
all its connotations in regard to New Zealand
is the inspirational background giving shape
to the ideas and colour to the moods. The
work is well integrated and concise in
expression. Lilburn's harmonic idiom is
expanded from the traditional only as far as
he feels the need to give precise expression
to his ideas, and there is no straining at
dissonance or complex key relationships for
their own sake. The orchestration seems
designed to illustrate, as it were, the
texture of the music and the orchestral colour
rises from the musical shapes."23
Lilburn was once again establishing himself as an orchestral composer.
String Quartet in"E minor was also composed in 1946. However,
this work was not given its first performance until 1950, when it was
performed by the touring Australian group, Musica Viva Quartet.
This
was at a concert organised by the Wellington Chamber Music Society in
the Wellington Town Hall 14 August 1950.
work was given in The Dominion the next day:
The following account of the
"The String Quartet in E minor by our own
Douglas Lilburne [sic], rather suffered
from being sandwiched in between Haydn and
Mozart. This music, as played by the four
strings, is fervently, almost ferociously,
melodramatic, with the 'cello firing the
big guns ••• while the violins soared to
ethereal heights "above the clamour. True,
there were tranquil passages in the andante
ripe with promises unfulfilled, but in the
22 Programme to concert.
23 Lilburn's first performance: "Song of the Antipodes". Music Ho
vol.5 no.4, 1947:4.