Graeme Koehne, an Australian composer born in 1956, received the training in modernism that was typical of the era in which he came of age. Early in his professional career (during a period when he worked with teachers as diverse as
Louis Andriessen,
Jacob Druckman, and
Virgil Thompson), he had an epiphany that he was free to write in any style he chose, and he embraced a tonal, audience-friendly style, reminiscent of
Copland, that freely incorporated popular and folk idioms. The four pieces here, written between the 1980s and the early 2000s, are light, clever, and accessible. They are inventively structured and scored, with rhythmic vitality and unabashed lyricism. The music is frequently lovely, entirely pleasant, and isn't kitschy, but it offers little that hasn't been heard many times before. His music frequently uses popular dance forms; Palm Court Suite evokes the dances of the first few decades of the twentieth century, and Tivoli Dances, music from the mid-century, such as swing. Shaker Dances uses authentic Shaker tunes, but they are so jazzed up that there is little of the simplicity of the chaste Shaker ethos left; the last movement sounds like a Texas hoedown. To His Servant Bach, God Grants a Final Glimpse: The Morning Star is an effective Baroque-sounding homage that incorporates or alludes to various Bachian themes, most prominently the chorale tune Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern. The
Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, conducted by
Richard Mills, plays with polish and stylish panache. The sound is warm, but the bass is too prominent, and the piano, which is used orchestrally rather than as a solo, tends to overwhelm in the movements in which it plays.