: Awakening - Marshall McGuire, Geoffrey Collins, Patricia Pollett

McGuire is a formidable asset to the contemporary music scene in Australia, and is the only harpist who specialises in both baroque harp and all forms of modern music. This CD is a best-seller in the catalogue.

"Marshall McGuire is a leading Australian harpist with a special interest in (and talent for) new or unfamiliar music. On this Tall Poppies disc he begins with an admirably shaped and coolly poised sonata for harp by the late Peggy Glanville-Hicks and a slightly sinister Fable by Helen Gifford. Barry Conyngham's Awakening is a work in seven short movements concerned with contrasts of stasis and activity and marked by colourful harp effects. Conyngham's Streams is an atmospheric piece for the same instrumentation as Debussy's sonata for flute, viola and harp, and also features Geoffrey Collins (flute) and Patricia Pollett (viola). 

Peter Sculthorpe's evocative Night Pieces, written for pianists, work perhaps even better in the composer's arrangement for harp; and McGuire has arranged two other Sculthorpe pieces, Into the Dreaming (originally for guitar) and From Kakadu. 

Another McGuire arrangement is of Graeme Koehne's elegantly planned To His Servant Bach..., a kind of chorale prelude suggested by thoughts about the end of Bach's life. Jennifer Fowler's Threaded Stars uses changes of tempo and rhythm as an equivalent for star patterns. McGuire's playing serves his composers with an almost ideal blend of technical sureness and interpretative sympathy." - Sydney Morning Herald, 1996