Lachlan Skipworth’s second chamber music album reflects COVID challenge

Lachlan Skipworth’s Oboe Quartet leads off the WA composer’s second album of chamber music with a sweeping breeze of a tune from Diana Doherty over undulating piano and strings of the Streeton Trio.

A sudden switch of mood then erupts in a challenging rhythmic figure characteristic of Skipworth’s recent work, perhaps in homage to the COVID-19 era.

“I remember working on the Oboe Quartet when we heard about a new virus in Wuhan,” he says.

“And then COVID just accelerated everything — it made me really write to the core strengths of classical music and performers, and cherish the act of live performance, try not to waste a single moment in each piece.”

Full melodic tone and disruptive rhythm seem to be twin themes, picked up in the second work, Skipworth’s Flute Sonata premiered at Perth’s Grove Library in 2020 by recording artist Andrew Nicholson.

Skipworth explained it then as an evolution, perhaps of expectation, in the return from COVID-19 shutdown.

Then as now, Adam Pinto’s piano and Nicholson’s flute erupt, chasing through scales and intervals like a dawn chorus, busy yet tuneful.

A mood switch next has flute wax meditatively over gently intoned chords.

Nicholson, the WA Symphony Orchestra principal flautist, brilliantly explores register and timbre over lilting piano, breaking back to a fugue, fluent and joyful.

“Compositionally I had to re-examine how to grab people instantly but also show them that there were layers beneath that were worth delving into on repeated listens,” Skipworth says.

“I think that is what inspires people to grow a deep attraction to music. All the performers told me they’d had my pieces stuck in their heads!”

The playful quality hinted at in the first two works surfaces again in the third, Skipworth’s Piano Quartet No.2, first written for a film project and premiered last year in concert by Cygnus Arioso, the ensemble Skipworth runs with violinist wife Akiko Miyazawa.

Shimmering strings lead in Jonathan Bradley’s ruminant piano, giving way to folkloric strains that inspired Skipworth and Miyazawa’s young daughter to dance at the premiere – an evocation of childhood capturing innocence and promise, pealing out with warmth and energy beautifully remembered in this recording.

The final three pieces — Light Rain, Shingetsu and The Crossing —are programmatic reflections of Skipworth’s development and his encounter with Japanese idiom and culture.

“COVID definitely sped up the realisation that if I sat around and waited for the majors or the ABC to come knocking, then I’d still be at zero,” Skipworth says.

“And besides, I’ve discovered that I do like to hold the reigns very tightly and oversee the whole process.

“Actually, with musicians playing my compositions I’m far more relaxed as I just love when they feel the music asks them to do something beyond what I’ve written – that’s the moment when it’s out of my hands, and is very beautiful.”

Listen to the album at: https://lachlanskipworth.com/album/cw2/