Douglas Lilburn - Allegro for Strings

Douglas Lilburn’s ‘Allegro for Strings’ was completed in 1942 and premiered by the Auckland 1YA Studio Orchestra. Lilburn’s biographer Philip Norman says the work is one of the composer’s most powerful earlier pieces and reveals that, privately, Lilburn suggested to his lover Rita Angus that the soul of their miscarried child lived in the work. Publicly, Lilburn attributed the work’s inspiration to both paintings of Angus and Denis Glover’s poem ‘Holiday Piece’.

The strings of the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra are led by its concertmaster, Andrew Beer in this Resound film from the Auckland Town Hall.

Audio recorded by RNZ Concert.
Film funded by NZ On Air.