This gathering of shorter pieces includes music that Lilburn composed in his initial years as a freelance composer, as well as the very last work to come from his pen. Clear-eyed and felicitous, they are nevertheless shot through with something transcendental - a strange and beautiful excitement.
Douglas Liburn occupies a pre-eminent position in New Zealand music, with a legacy extending well beyond his compositional output. As a composer, a teacher, and later as a warm, generous and encouraging background presence, he presided in innumerable ways over the artistic growth of this country. His music, from the early works redolent of the influence of Sibelius and Vaughan Williams, to the electroacoustic pieces of his later years, makes up a corpus of works that has been instrumental in establishing a genuinely vernacular voice in New Zealand classical music.
