William Barton joins the Willoughby Symphony and conductor Nicholas Milton for Peter Sculthorpe’s Earth Cry on 7 and 8 November 2026 at The Concourse.
A seminal work of the Australian orchestral repertoire, Earth Cry was commissioned by the Australian Broadcasting Company for the Adelaide Festival in 1986 and premiered by the Adelaide Symphony. It represents Sculthorpe’s attempt to reckon with the breadth of the Australian landscape – physical and cultural – and “attune ourselves to this continent, to listen to the cry of the earth, as the Aborigines have done for many thousands of years”, which he felt languished underacknowledged in the Australian imagination of the moment.
This approach is reflected in the work’s orchestration, which represented a departure for Sculthorpe, with the violins scored in unison and lower strings joined with their counterparts in the brass, to suggest the continent’s vast, open geography. As with many of Sculthorpe’s works, it draws on indigenous music, including his own setting of Aboriginal poetry The Song of Tailitnama from 1974, and of course the part for didjeridu. The four parts of the piece consist of quick ritualistic music framed by slower music of a supplicatory nature, and an extended coda, capturing the raw beatify of the landscape with drones, vibrant rhythms, and sounds of nature. It has been recorded by both the Sydney Symphony and Queensland Symphony orchestras. Nicholas Milton will return to the work with Barton with the Göttingen Symphony Orchestra in June 2027; Earth Cry will also appear with the Midcoast Symphony Orchestra and didjeridu player Stephen Kent and conductor Rohan Smith in Maine in January 2027.
Barton, Australia’s leading didjeridu player, has played an integral in the creation of many of Sculthorpe’s works, having given over 200 performances of his work to date; in 2025 he toured the work with the Australian Youth Orchestra to Musikverein, Der Rundfunk Berlin Brandenburg, Rheingau Festival, Het Concertgebouw, and finally the Sydney Opera House for a homecoming performance.
As well as presenting the didjeridu part for Earth Cry (in both full and abridged versions) with all major Australian orchestras, he has performed the piece internationally with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Orchestre Philharmonique du Strasbourg, the Janáček Philharmonic Ostrava, and the Hong Kong Sinfonietta. As well as championing Earth Cry, Barton premiered Sculthorpe’s Beethoven Variations (2006), Songs of Sea and Sky (2003) and String Quartet No.14 with the Goldner String Quartet at the 2005 Australian Festival of Chamber Music.