The Green CD

In a climate of rising concern for the planet, this programme of Australian choral works turns on nature and protest. Wesley-Smith's Who Killed Cock Robin? stands as a landmark of Australian choral writing, and one of its most popular.

Brett Weymark tenor vocals
The Song Company ensemble
Jennifer Kaye soprano vocals
David Barmby countertenor vocals
Jeannie Van de Velde soprano vocals
Scott Cameron tenor vocals
Christopher Josey tenor vocals
David Mackenzie tenor vocals
Michael Keough tenor vocals
James Renwick tenor vocals
David Russell countertenor vocals, soloist
Ian Oi countertenor vocals
Penelope Sharpe soprano vocals, soloist
Tobias Cole countertenor vocals
Jane Edwards soprano vocals
Jennifer Moss soprano vocals
Roland Peelman conductor, artistic director
Judy Glen narrator

Anthony Bremner composer
Ross Edwards composer
Michael Whiticker composer
Martin Wesley-Smith composer
Stuart Greenbaum composer

Recorded in April 1993 at Studio 200 in the ABC Ultimo Centre, the disc gathers Australian choral works that answer to nature and environmental damage.

Wesley-Smith's Who Killed Cock Robin? remains a landmark, turning the nursery rhyme into a parable that moves from parlour ballad and barbershop to fierce dissonance. Edwards's Flower Songs and Bremner's comic In the Shrubbery sit beside sterner statements from Greenbaum and Whiticker, all sung by an expanded Song Company under Roland Peelman.

Reviews

Martin Wesley-Smith's composer colleagues, myself included, secretly hate him. It's not a personal thing. He's a generous fellow, affable to a fault, and there are few people with whom I'd rather have dinner. But he seems to have misunderstood the whole point about being a contemporary composer. He writes music that audiences like. I don't mean they just respect it, or admire it, or find it powerful or deeply affecting; no, they really like it.… Wesley-Smith's music spans all the usual genres from chamber music to opera, and his work with electronics and computers seems to call for the adjective 'pioneering', But the fact that audiences even like his electronic music (which surely can't be right) attests to the nature of his output. Even when he is being deadly serious, as in the chamber opera Quito (TP111) … Wesley-Smith continually undercuts the pathos with black humour. I should stress that it's usually not applied humour, but rather a rich seam of irony, capable of descending into slapstick, but more generally insinuating itself with some subtlety. It's the musical equivalent of a raised eyebrow, from beneath which Wesley-Smith views the world and all its absurdities.

And so it is with Who Killed Cock Robin? now 17 years old and available post-vinylly for the first time. As the disc's title suggests, its contents reflect the concern that some Australian composers feel at the destruction of the natural environment, and Wesley-Smith's piece, the 'classic' of the compilation, receives a compelling performance from an expanded Song Company under its director Roland Peelman. Indeed, the Song Company is in generally fine form here. As the topic for a musical work, the poisoning of the planet by pesticides is as grim as it's unlikely, but Wesley-Smith's approach works wonderfully well. The original Victorian parlour ballad is treated to a variety of styles, ranging from a chromatically perverse music-hall novelty song with an injection of 1950s doo-wop, to barbershop, to a climactic, slow-motion pile-up of Ligetian dissonances during the final recital of the list of insecticides that ultimately killed 'poor Cock Robin'. It's a small masterpiece.

— Andrew Ford, 24 Hours

This disc has … a declaration that it contains environmentally friendly choral music. What it does not claim, but could, is that it is entertaining and tuneful as well as, in places, frankly propagandist on behalf of saving a polluted Earth. The big work is Martin Wesley-Smith's Who Killed Cock Robin? This is a kind of choral inquest on one of the most famous deaths in song and verse.… Barber-shop harmonies, vocalised oom-pah harmonies, memorable tunes and piercingly scored choral paragraphs all have a place in this musical parable. Wesley-Smith's brief Who Stopped the Rain? does not allot blame, but Michael Whiticker's Man, Skin Cancer of the Earth certainly does, with aggressive speech-propelled and percussive urgency in a bluntly propagandistic manner, while Stuart Greenbaum's Upon the Dark Water makes an accusation almost too poetically oblique to be noticed. Ross Edwards' two Flower Songs celebrate some Australian wildflowers in attractive rhythm and catchy melody; and Anthony Bremner's In the Shrubbery, set to a text taken from a gardening book, is a piece of non-political vaudeville introduced by Judy Glen's primly bossy guide. The Song Company is in its best form under Roland Peelman's typically precise direction.

— Roger Covell, Sydney Morning Herald

Martin Wesley-Smith's Who Killed Cock Robin? is a clever, often hilarious little cantata that parades the murder suspects in diverse musical styles; a goofy waltz, 50s rock, some barbershop, and a nifty soft-shoe danced by a falsely accused caterpillar. Turns out it was pesticides that got the little birdy, and the fearsome names of the chemical substances are belted out in nasty dissonances as the piece draws to a close. The other notable entry is Anthony Bremner's In the Shrubbery – a series of verbatim quotes from an oh-so-boring botany text, complete with hilarious declamations from an officious female narrator and some frothy music that ends with a stirring ode to fertiliser. Definitely not the same old shit!

— Greenfield, American Record Guide

Artists

The Song Company

The Song Company sings with bite and polish across Mozart's scatological canons, Josquin's courtly chansons, and Australian choral works that protest, dance and mourn.

Roland Peelman

Belgian-born conductor, pianist and artistic director Roland Peelman has shaped Australian music for more than three decades. A mentor to composers and singers, he is known especially for his long leadership of The Song Company and for championing new work.

Tracks

Who Killed Cock Robin? Martin Wesley-Smith

i. Announcement 4:51
ii. Flora the Fly 2:19
iii. Analysis 1:11
iv. Freddie the Fish :49
v. Report 1:21
vi. I'm a Caterpillar of Society 2:42
vii. Caterpillar of Adversity 1:11
viii. Post-mortem Report 1:42
ix. All the Birds... 1:25

Flower Songs Ross Edwards

i. Ecstatic 5:17
ii. Tranquil 6:02

In the Shrubbery Anthony Bremner

i. Introductory Remarks 1:42
ii. Abuse of Shrubs 1:25
iii. Choisya 1:57
iv. Buddleia 2:01
v. Potentilla 1:41
vi. Philadelphus 2:01
vii. Magnolia 1:10
viii. Finale 3:58

Upon the Dark Water Stuart Greenbaum

i. 1:57
ii. 3:31
iii. 2:53
Man, Skin Cancer of the Earth Michael Whiticker 13:45
Who Stopped the Rain? Martin Wesley-Smith 3:08

Performers

Brett Weymark · tenor vocals
Judy Glen · narrator · tracks 12–19
The Song Company · ensemble
Jennifer Kaye · soprano vocals
David Barmby · countertenor vocals
Jeannie Van de Velde · soprano vocals
Scott Cameron · tenor vocals
Christopher Josey · tenor vocals
David Mackenzie · tenor vocals
Michael Keough · tenor vocals
James Renwick · tenor vocals
David Russell · countertenor vocals, soloist
Ian Oi · countertenor vocals
Penelope Sharpe · soprano vocals, soloist
Tobias Cole · countertenor vocals
Jane Edwards · soprano vocals
Jennifer Moss · soprano vocals
Roland Peelman · conductor, artistic director

Composers

Ross Edwards

One of Australia's best known and most performed composers, Ross Edwards lives and works in Sydney. His commitment to music as a positive and regenerative force has led him to explore beyond the confines of Western art music.

Stuart Greenbaum

Stuart Greenbaum’s sound has overt connections to jazz, pop and minimalism, yet is equally grounded in the Western art music tradition, across a large body of orchestral, chamber, choral and stage works.

Michael Whiticker

Michael Whiticker was born in Gundagai, Australia. He has received major commissions from leading Australian ensembles and organisations, and has won numerous awards in Australia and Germany for his compositions.

Anthony Bremner

Martin Wesley-Smith

Martin Wesley-Smith wrote music audiences actually like: electronic pieces that stay human, choral parables that turn nursery rhymes into environmental inquests, and chamber scores laced with Lewis Carroll fantasy and hard political irony.

Where to listen

The Green CD is available for streaming through Apple Music. It can also be purchased through the iTunes Music Store.

The Green CD is available as a CD. It can be purchased online through Buywell Music or the Australian Music Centre which both offer online ordering.

Product details

Catalogue number: TP064
Total playing time: 69 minutes 59 seconds
Producer: Belinda Webster
Recording Engineer: Neale Sandbach
Release date: 5 Aug 1995
Label: Tall Poppies
Category: Australian Classics
Genres: Contemporary Classical, Choral & Sacred
Barcode: EAN 9399000006428

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