“Joy and wonder suffused the world premiere of Australian Andrew Schultz’s Symphony No.4, deftly delivered by WA Symphony Orchestra and conductor Otto Tausk at UWA’s Winthrop Hall this weekend. Delicate chimes and mystery in horn opened a distant scene — inspired, Schultz said, by Arctic ice tumbling into a frigid sea — cascading into sudden drama across brass, woodwind and percussion. A Nordic timbre in trumpets over sighing portamento strings, supplemented by horns, built to another climax as Alex Timcke’s timpani rattled across the soundscape like a far-off avalanche.

Tausk directed multi-layered strains with almost leisurely grace, as if careful not to trigger another catastrophic collapse. Offstage horn (Francesco Lo Surdo) stretched out the palette, borne along on unseen currents; a world in motion sung into being by multiple musical talents as clarion calls from brass and woodwind rose above interlaced strings and driving percussion. Settling back to wind chimes and horns, clarinet (Allan Meyer) and oboe (Liz Chee) wove their distinctive magic, echoed in piccolo (Sonia Croucher) to close. Schultz eschewed a title for what he called “a purely abstract work”, but the description of each movement — starting with “Expansive” — betrayed a programmatic quality, perhaps in tension with his intent.

Furtive rhythm in percussion and muted trumpet set up the second stanza, “Circle Game”, evolving through E-flat clarinet (Som Howie) into a jazz-infused fugue based on East Timorese tradition; playful though anything but childish. Raucous outbursts lent force to the discourse yet, like childhood, it was all too brief.

Bittersweet harmonies in strings set a poignant tone for the third movement, “Chorale”, melting through woodwind to an innocent balladic melody. Where the first two movements spoke of wonder and joy, here was hope; warm and comforting as horns soared on winds of aspiration, with delicacy a hallmark across all brass. Tausk conjured repeated waves of sonic balm with seemingly minimal effort, helped throughout by the clarity of Schultz’s score. Each voice interlocked with another like tiles in a mosaic of iconic quality, down to the last plangent chord.

Magical flashes of tone and fragments of melody set up a sorcerer’s workshop for the finale, “Gothic Burlesque”, with furious energy all round and fiendish virtuosity in every part. Tausk slowed then hurried the dance to a giddily gleeful tempo before slowing again to a jagged, jaunty pace; all-but menacing yet also playful, with a crash-bang conclusion and heartfelt applause.

After the interval, Debussy’s three-part Nocturnes opened with Nuages (Clouds); cool woodwind setting an ambient pace supported by a cushion of strings. After Schultz’s fireworks there were no surprises, just a gentle ebb and flow, ethereal as the namesake clouds. Harp and flute made an exotic couple, with rumbling double basses offsetting woodwind highlights, fading to close.”

[David Cusworth, “Andrew Schultz’s Symphony No.4 premieres with WA Symphony Orchestra and Otto Tausk at UWA’s Winthrop Hall,” The West Australian, 24 June 2025.]

“Perhaps best known for his large-scale cantata Journey to Horseshoe Bend, Andrew Schultz is one of Australia’s finest living composer of symphonies. Each of his four symphonies has notable characteristics. The First (1998), a choral symphony titled In Tempore Stellae, is a masterly, three-movement work for soloists, chorus and orchestra which successfully integrates texts and music throughout. Its point of initial reference was Luciano Berio’s Sinfonia, but the musical language incorporates modal melody and harmony into an otherwise contemporary sound. The Second, Ghosts of Reason (2008), is purely for orchestra. It is cast in one continuous eighteen-minute movement that builds gradually from a chaconne-like, pervasive repeating four chord pattern towards a glorious and huge climax. The Third, Century (2012), returns to an expansive three-movement design. It was commissioned for a public performance in Canberra to commemorate the centenary of Walter Burley-Griffin’s design of the city.

The new Fourth Symphony (2024), first heard in Perth on 20 June 2025, was commissioned for the West Australian Symphony Orchestra by Geoff Stearn. Like the First and Third, this is also a large, expansive work; this time in four movements but lacking any overall programmatic intention. The four movements are, respectively, entitled ‘Expansive’ , ‘Circle Dance’, ‘Chorale’ and ‘Gothic Burlesque’ . The Fourth is scored for the standard full orchestra, with each string section divided into two parts. Excepting the timbral similarities which begin each movement, I did not note any cyclic linkage of musical material between movements.

On encountering a new piece of music, a simple question arises: “Would I want to hear it again?” In this case, the answer is ‘Yes” – resoundingly! The musical language is accessible to a typical audience of classical art music and immediately enjoyable. Through my membership of the Australian Music Centre, I was able to access a digital score of the work, which assisted me in following Schultz’s intricate scoring. I explored the work through ABC Classic’s July 17 broadcast of its 20 June premiere; as this broadcast was recorded and made digitally available, I have affirmed the following judgements after multiple hearings.Each of the four movements begins with chimes or bell-like sonorities. In the first movement, ‘Expansive’ , the music builds from the opening chimes and impressionistic horn calls over sustained string harmonies towards dramatic incidents, inspired by the composer’s experience ,of viewing falling ice sheets in the Arctic. The horn calls then introduce a surging, climactic middle section suggesting the raw power of nature. Schultz suggests two or more speeds at ,once: the element of great forward propulsion underpinned by slow-moving underlying harmonies, recalling the sonic vistas of the accelerating sections of the first movement of Sibelius’s Fifth. The music then eases back in tempo and restates the horn calls of the opening section. ‘Expansive’ encapsulates traditional ways of using the orchestra and modality, which we might associate with early twentieth century composers like Sibelius, Nielsen or even Debussy (such as in, for example, La Mer), as well as the crisp, pulsing sonorities of contemporary post-minimalists like John Adams.

‘Circle Dance’ represents the symphony’s scherzo. It is based on an ancient East Timorese children’s dance and builds from simple textures to a pulsing rhumba. An initial melody permeates the music, picking up a number of contrapuntal partners as it dances, some of which are gentle, others of which are garish and bizarre. For me, the music captures similar feelings to those I hear expressed in Graeme Koehne’s Powerhouse. ‘Chorale’, the Fourth’s slow movement, is an elegiac meditation of great beauty. Slower-moving outer sections frame a glorious stream of melody in the centre. This music is an unashamed embrace of rich triadic harmony that would have been impossible for, excepting Malcolm Arnold and Malcolm Williamson, a serious art music composer during the high point of modernism fifty-five or sixty years ago. Yet, even so, the density of the divided string writing and the glint of the orchestration retains a contemporary feel that is familiar in cinema’s evocations of vast landscapes and romantic ecstasy.

As a fast finale, ‘Gothic Burlesque’ recaptures some of the more garish elements of the scherzo to expand upon them. The movement features a persistent harmonic progression and a banal thematic refrain that bores into the listener’s mind as a persistent earworm; these features define the movement’s opening and closing sections. In the middle of this bizarre and blatantly disturbing music emerges a glitzy waltz, complete with cheeky trumpet flourishes, which themselves develop a feverish intensity. An Adams-like, ‘minimalist’ parody of the interminable cadence sequences one finds in, for instance, the finales of Beethoven’s Third and Fifth bringsthe high exuberance of the music to a riotous conclusion.

Is it fitting to incorporate the glitz and glamour of the night club within the sanctity of the symphonic tradition? I think that Mahler and Shostakovich would have no trouble with this ‘worldly’ intrusion; one thinks of the circus-like antics of the Russian composer’s finales in his Sixth and Ninth, or the middle movements of Mahler’s Ninth. Also, Schultz’s finale provides a soul-connection to the second movement, just as ‘Expansive’ and ‘Chorale’ share in the awe of, respectively, nature and the divine.

The rich musical experience contained within this Fourth exemplifies the relatively little-known but extensive body of symphonic music that should be performed, recorded and celebrated as some of the best artistic product originating from Australia. Let us hope successive performances of this symphony follow its premiere.”

[Rhoderick McNeill, “Andrew Schultz’s Fourth Symphony,” Quadrant, September 2025.]

ABOUT SYMPHONY NO 4 – INTERVIEWS WITH ANDREW SCHULTZ

Read Maddy Briggs interview article from Limelight about the new symphony: ‘Journeys into Space and Sound.’

Read Sarah McNeill’s interview article from The Post: ‘This, then, is Number Four.’

Read the WASO News interview with Andrew Schultz, ‘A Decade in the Making.’

The Symphony and an interview with the composer is featured in the December 2025, 100% Australian Made podcast from presenter Julie Simonds at 2MBS-FM Fine Music Sydney. Click here to listen at this link.

Click here to go to the program note page of this website to listen to Symphony No. 4 online.

Andrew Schultz (left) and Otto Tausk at the Symphony’s premiere (Photo by Daniel James Grant)

Click here for more information on the Art Music Awards.

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