The name Lachlan Skipworth may be as unfamiliar to you as it was to me but it won’t remain so for long. Hailing from Western Australia, where he studied the clarinet, he has immersed himself in advanced musical study and has emulated Van Gogh and Monet by being particularly attracted to Japanese artistic forms. He has just published a CD containing three works which are as contrasting as they are exciting.
The first track is titled Breath of Thunder and is the most orientally focused of the three. I’m lucky enough to have heard Riley Lee playing the shakuhachi, a type of flute made from bamboo, at the Huntington Music Festival and loved the soft peaceful tone. Here the instrument comes into its own with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra thriving on its tonality under Gerard Salonga who has a special interest in Far Eastern music. Also featured is Kaoru Watanabe’s shinobue, a higher register flute which is prominent in noh and kabuki theatre music, and the taiko drums handled brilliantly by the specialist group Taikoz.
The shakuhachi is prominent in the slow first section but then the shinobue and percussion with numerous different accents lead the music into a dramatic section. There then follows a heavenly intertwining episode between the two Japanese flutes which forms the backbone of the work. The full orchestra joins in the next frenetic episode but Riley Lee asserts his authority with a pianissimo solo which fades to nothingness.
Track two Avem Asperitas runs with a video display. Avem is the Latin for birds while Asperitas refers to a recently named cloud formation with irregular wave formations under a cumulonimbus stratum. These figures are represented in the display but the music is great on a standalone basis. Performed by the Momentum Ensemble, vibrato on the bell-like percussion instruments produces the wavy cloud effects while the birds are represented by the high wind instruments. Very suitable for relaxing after a hard day’s work.
Track three Hymns in Reverie is written for three choirs and two percussionists and was commissioned by the Tokyo Philharmonic Choir, the words being taken from a text in four stanzas by the German eighteenth century romantic Novalis. The text is spiritual and so is the music with swirling sevenths and ninths and fading figures being taken up anew by another section, upper voices predominating. This produces an eerie dreamlike effect which is only temporarily interrupted by a more forceful middle section while there is a background of harp and bell-like sounds.
This album was a revelation to myself as I never expected to enjoy this genre of music so much. The dialogue between shakuhachi and shinobue in the middle section of Breath of Thunder will haunt me forever.
Tony Burke
Album release: Lachlan Skipworth: Breath of Thunder, Avem Asperitas & Hymns in Reverie
Release date: November 6th, 2020
Performers: Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonic Chorus of Tokyo, Momentum Ensemble,
Riley Lee, Taikoz, Kaoru Watanabe, Gerard Salonga, Kazuki Yamada, Daniel Carter.
Label: Cygnus Arioso
The album is selling on Bandcamp here
