Whistles and Whispers from Uluru (2007)
(for recorder and string orchestra)

Australian Chamber Orchestra and Genevieve Lacey. Australian Tour 12 concerts, November 2007

[...] As part of its nationwide Rapture tour, the Australian Chamber Orchestra explores, through collaboration with Lacey, the scope of the recorder’s versatility across genres and eras. Traversing the pristine, rapid solo passages of a Telemann concerto, ACO arrives at the more volatile sound worlds of newly commissioned works by Estonian composer Erkki-Sven Tüür (b. 1959) and Perth-based James Ledger (b. 1966). The program concludes with a lush string orchestra arrangement (sans recorder) of Verdi’s String Quartet in E minor, perhaps an odd addition but not without musical antecedents to the sweeping romanticism found in Tüür’s offering.

Erkki-Sven Tüür often draws inspiration for his work from landscapes in which he perceives ‘the presence of both movement and stillness.’ Whistles and Whispers from Uluru (2007) combines the rich birdsong of the composer’s native surrounds (the Baltic Sea) with the hum of a starkly different environment: that of the Australian desert.

Tüür is not the first European composer to be taken with this country’s flora and fauna: Messiaen was famously entranced by lyrebird song during his excursion to the Brindabella Ranges in Canberra. Whistles and Whispers opens with similarly ecstatic, birdlike swoops and flourishes from the sopranino recorder, melting microtonally into a dialogue of crisp string pizzicato and shimmering chords described by the composer as ‘soundclouds’. Tüür’s atmospheric use of strings is not far removed from the glassy violin harmonics in the music of countryman Arvo Pärt, but, instead of eerie austerity, he achieves a charged, gestural drama. It is as if each sustained chord represents the composer’s view of the imposing rock formation from a new and humbling angle.

This sense of awe and discovery is echoed by forays into the recorder’s arsenal of extended techniques (eg. multiphonics, twin recorders). The piece moves gradually through the recorder family, reaching its climax on a large tenor played like a shakuhachi to evoke the dry desert wind. Finally, Lacey retreats symmetrically through various instrument sizes and tessituras to return to the original sopranino, as if Tüür had pressed the rewind button on evolution. [...]

[...] Estonian composer Erkki-Sven Tüür’s Whistles and Whispers from Uluru began suggestively enough with Lacey’s sopranino instrument imitating bird twitterings before moving into more solid territory, the soloist working through the work with a full range of recorders from soprano to bass and back again. Like the Ledger piece, this also invited the listener to watch out for changing textures, the orchestra underpinning their soloist with impressively unpredictable textures that served as a meleonic foil for Lacey’s conscientious delineation of a taxing, rapidly moving dominant thread in this intriguing piece. [...]

[...] Erkki-Sven Tüür’s Whistles and Whispers from Uluru, is a musical tribute to Australia. Music of shifting tonalities and rhythmic changes, of whispering bird-like suggestions and sounds standing in space, it effectively uses multiple recorders in solo from the highest in register to the lowest. It was realised in a performance of assumed brilliance from the soloist, with firmly shaped support. [...]

[...] The appearance of any new work by leading Estonian composer Erkki-Sven Tuur should be an international event. Commissioned by a generous ACO patron in Perth, Peter Dawson, Whistles and Whispers from Uluru inhabited two worlds, the natural soundscape alongside more contemporary dimensions. For an unsettling 16 minutes, Tuur's subtle imagination veered between fascination and trepidation. [...]