Louise Webster Photo: Supplied
Louise Webster has a dual career in music and medicine - she works as a child psychiatrist and paediatrician at Starship Children’s Hospital, and as a composer.
She also somehow finds the time to play second violin for the amateur St Matthew’s Chamber Orchestra. And it was this Orchestra that commissioned Louise to write a 'substantial work' for them.
Louise originally conceived of the commission as a symphonic piece with a few solos, keeping in mind that there were things a non-professional orchestra could do well, and some not so well. But when she found out the guest soloist for the premiere would be one of New Zealand's best violinists that all changed. That violinist was New Zealand String Quartet's Helene Pohl.
"She's an astounding musician, and can play anything," says Louise, "So I ended up handing her a full blown concerto to play with St Matthews."
When the work was later selected for the SOUNZ NZSO Readings Helene was out of town, so Louise needed to find another soloist.
"I was very lucky to have Yuka [Eguchi] from the NZSO play it. She's done some really interesting things and brought her own colour to it. It was really interesting to hear a piece played by different soloists. I tend to let people make what they will of a piece. I do really believe that once you've written a piece of music it then belongs to the performers and then they can do what they like with it."
The first movement of the concerto opens with a rising augmented figure in the solo violin, which returns in ever changing forms throughout the movement. The second movement is fast, driven, and rhythmic, and the final movement a slow moving and sombre dance for the soloist and strings.
Check out Yuka Eguchi and the NZSO's performance here:
The evocative subtitle of the concerto 'In hollowed bone I hear the seas roar' is a line from The Sea by New Zealand poet, Ruth Dallas.
"It just kind of fitted the piece after I'd written it." says Louise.
