After the Fire

Michael WHITICKER
Born 1954, Gundagai, Australia

After the Fire (1992)

prepared harp with scordatura solo
Commissioned by ELISION Ensemble with the assistance of the Australia Council

The fires that raged in the Dandenong Ranges in February and March 1968 shocked the landscape artist Fred WILLIAMS (1927--1982) into a new perception of the environment. As soon as the fires abated Williams explored and recorded the altered landscape; `there is a huge gum tree that is smoking like a factory chimney . . . I use clay and charcoal from the ground and grind it into the paper proper . . . The sonorous colours tonight after the fire were something indeed . . . the fire area is slowly turning green-orange.´

Composer Michael WHITICKER has taken this changing colour in the landscape, of new growth from fire as the starting point for one of the most challenging and virtuosic pieces ever written for harp (1992), sharing the same title as the painting. Small percussive gestures, scrapings of string and pedal movements gradually grow into motivic and wild melodic fragments.

Programme note © Daryl BUCKLEY