On 24 February Eliza Shephard performs Matthew Hindson’s flute concerto House Music (2006) at the Sidney Meyer Music Bowl with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and Carlo Antonioli.
House Music is cast in four movements. Its title gestures to both irrepressible energies of the House genre and the journey through the many familiar domestic spaces the 25-minute piece undertakes. The first movement is a frantic exploration of kitchen, garage, and workshop, beginning with a cadenza for flute that is comprehensive in its exploration of standard and extended techniques – “everything but the kitchen sink”, as Hindson puts it. The second is sensual and decadent, imagining a spacious foyer with luxurious fountains and inviting swimming pool. ‘Lounge’ follows with more relaxation, this time surrounded by 1960s red vinyl with Muzak on the stereo. This temporary repose is interrupted by a demanding group of children, who whisk the audience through the Nursery and Games Room in an ebullient closing movement that also makes a deft nod to the composer’s love of video games.
Shephard and the MSO performed Lounge (from House Music) in June 2023 with Benjamin Northey in a concert broadcast on ABC Classic FM and ABC television – a 2023 arrangement of movement three for soloist and chamber orchestra. She also scooped the 2022 ABC Young Performers Award, the highlight of her final performance, a version of House Music for piano and percussion - with Alex Meagher and Peter de Jager – watch here.
House Music is one of Hindson’s numerous pieces reflecting his interest in the explosive energies of electronic and dance music, and reimagining the computer-based realisations of those genres for acoustic instruments – an impulse reflected in works such as 2001’s The Rave and the Nightingale for string quartet and orchestra, which imagines Franz Schubert in the DJ booth, and 1997’s Rave-Elation for orchestra. Hindson’s 2022 ballet score for Sir David Bintley, A Comedy of Errors, premiered in 2022 to critical acclaim, also evokes rave and techno.
House Music premiered with Marina Piccinini and the London Philharmonic Orchestra in 2006 at London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall, conducted by Roberto Minczuk and was recorded in 2015 by Alexa Still with the Oberlin Orchestra and Raphael Jimenez, having been presented by Still at the National Flute Convention in Caesar’s Palace, Las Vegas. Soloists to take up the piece have included Julien Beaudiment (with the Royal Bangkok Symphony Orchestra), Meret Louisa Vogel (Göttingen Symphony Orchestra), and Sofia Gantois (Orchestre Philharmonique de Liège).