This weekend, the West Virginia Symphony Orchestra will play two
compositions by Douglas Lilburn, a twentieth-century composer from New
Zealand. Lilburn’s orchestral music is
expressive and melodic. It has the impassioned yearning, the sense of
bittersweet sadness paired with sweeping optimism that characterizes much of my
favorite orchestral music. And yet, I’ve
only just discovered Lilburn’s music because of the upcoming WV Symphony
concert.
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Douglas Lilburn |
WV Symphony Artistic Director and conductor Maestro Grant Cooper studied with Lilburn in New Zealand. He attributes the sense of space in the music
partially to the New Zealand
landscape, and the expression of yearning to Lilburn and New
Zealand’s role as outsiders in the European
classical music mainstream.
Cooper is an advocate for Lilburn’s music, and he’s
performed and conducted his music with different ensembles over the years. In our interview, Cooper
gave a compelling description of Lilburn and New
Zealand’s struggle for recognition and
search for identity within the world of classical music. Listen to our
discussion of Lilburn and his music:
Maestro Grant Cooper discusses Douglas Lilburn