DESCRIPTION:
Richard Meale - Cantilena Pacifica
Orchestral arrangement of String Quartet No.2 (1987) - 5th mvt.

Performers: Erica Kennedy (violin), Richard Mills (conductor), Tasmanian SO.

Richard Meale explained that he began to experience 'some misgivings' about the limited expressive power of high modernism in the second half of the 70s: "The problem that I was encountering was brought to a head in 1979 when I began my Second String Quartet. Sadly, my best friend, Stephen Wilson, died after a sudden onset of cancer. It now became a matter of personal necessity to write a piece that would be a memorial to him. So it became clear that the work could not be based on any artifice; its existence had to lie in its emotional truth." That memorial would be the last movement of the Quartet, the Cantilena pacifica, or 'peaceful song', which like Samuel Barber's Adagio has taken on a life independent of the quartet from which it derives, and which exists in this version for violin and strings. Here Meale gives his lyric impulse free rein in a long melody for solo violin which stretches over three stanzas.

From the album: "TSO Australian Composer Series Volume 3: Richard Meale", released on ABC Classics 2009.
https://shop.abc.net.au/products/cantilena-pacifica-mus-digital

Photo: Narrabeen ocean baths, Sydney.
Courtesy of Bruce Hood (with thanks):
https://www.flickr.com/photos/bruce-hood/