“Landscapes” program note
Coral fantasy
Composer-pianist Wendy Hiscocks grew up in Wollongong, NSW. She began playing the piano at a young age, and started composing in her teens, going on to study composition with Peter Sculthorpe at the University of Sydney. Hiscocks moved to London in 1988, and has received commissions, premières and broadcasts from distinguished soloists, ensembles, choirs and festivals from around the world. Hiscocks has completed a doctorate on the music of Arthur Benjamin, and has strong interest and growing involvement in curated performance and recordings involving especially film and media.
Coral Fantasy was commissioned by the trio Triangulus with funding from the Arts Council of Great Britain, and was premiered at the King of Hearts in Norwich, UK in 1994. At the time, Hiscocks had a number of connections to the ballet world – she was undertaking adult classes, accompanying a children’s ballet school, and also had a number of friends who were dancers – one of whom sparked the idea of a ballet about life under the sea. Hiscocks is gifted with multi-sensory synaesthesia, and this experience is reflected in the way she is able to capture, through musical means, the movement, colours, light flashes and textures that one would experience in the world of a coral reef.
Coral Fantasy consists of a series of short, continuous sections. The harmonic and textural language is reminiscent of the impressionistic style of Debussy and Ravel, with subtle and intricate dynamic, articulation and pedalling indications. The opening, sunlight dancing on the waves, is marked ‘lively and bright’, and is joyful and witty and sparkling. It gradually submerges into under the sea which opens with a ppp crotchet duet in the strings, marked ‘sul tasto, non vib.’ The warm mid-range and deeper tones of the cello and piano are explored in this section. The coral reef features arpeggiandi chords in the piano (like seaweed gently swaying in the water) interjected with flowing semiquavers. Coral anemone opens with a brief waltz, and then the textures lift to a floating Jellyfish section; in Fish you can hear the gently swaying side-fins in the strings; Clownfish is marked ‘playful’ and ‘laughing’; Rising to the Surface swirls and lifts, over and over, gradually settling into Sunset, which revisits motifs from throughout the work, and represents an expansive tropical horizon, fading into a timeless night sky banded across by the Milky Way.
Wendy Hiscocks (Photo provided by composer)
The score for ‘Coral Fantasy’ can be purchased from the Australian Music Centre.
Background photo credit: ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies