Elena, thank you for coming back to the Museum today
to play some parts of your 2009 composition 'Garden of Dreams'.
I thought to start talking about it we might go back to 2008
when the Museum first contacted you about this idea
about you composing something in relation to the Museum.
I wonder if you could just tell us about what that was like
getting a strange phone call or a strange letter saying,
'Would you like to come to the Museum?'
I felt very excited.
I remember Gabrielle called me and said,
'Would you like to write this piece for the National Museum?'
I said, 'Yes, but I really need to see the Museum.'
'I haven't been inside yet.'
So I had the opportunity to come and meet first of all the people behind it,
behind the exhibitions and behind the collections and research.
It was fantastic.
I met you then.
You did yes, absolutely.
I saw lots and lots of objects and exhibits
and also got a lot of information in the written form,
the book about the Museum.
So I went away after two days full of impressions
and then the next step was -
where to from here?
So I started sorting out my ideas, not even ideas yet,
just impressions.
There were few that grabbed my attention
and they were beautiful objects, the ones I did not go for as well.
There were a couple I was really tempted to go for
and to kind of use them as a source of my imagination.
But the specific objects that grabbed my attention
I said, 'Yes, I can actually think up
a piece of music that would go with it'
or it doesn't have to go with it, it can be just inspired by it.
I think it's very important to make this distinction.
I'm not describing an object; I'm actually responding to an object
or to why it's there, for example - the story of it.
Anyway, so this was my trip in 2008.
I started writing the piece pretty much a week later.
So that was very fresh in my mind.
Elena, once you had seen some of the objects and been to the Museum,
how did you then go about developing those ideas?
The very first one I must say was I was absolutely
struck by the Garden of Australian Dreams.
I said immediately I would love that to be my title for the piece.
So I talked through that with the Museum people and it was fine.
I must say later I decided to call the piece 'Garden of Dreams'
because I'd like to include the world into this piece.
Even though it's an Australian museum,
I think it's more global than that.
But I still love the 'Garden of Dreams', it's a great title.
Then the objects that grabbed my attention were love tokens
with the messages of love stencilled by convicts on the coins or tokens.
I just loved the idea of those.
I remember the strangest thing happened
when I started writing the piece,
I thought I will start with the stencilling of this message on the metal.
I remember I was here in 2008 late in the year,
and I started writing it.
I remember getting a postcard, a Christmas card from the National Museum
and there was this token on the postcard.
It was amazing.
I thought it must be right then.
You know sometimes you say there are such things as coincidence
it just must be the right thing to do.
Anyway, that it was a fantastic first idea to use that as an object.
The second one was my favourite object of all - Kimberley points.
I just adored the way it was presented like a piece of art,
that theme line where the practicality of the instruments which are functional
become a piece of art
but also the way they are put together on this beautiful screen,
I couldn't get that out of my mind.
I thought that was the image for another movement.
So those two collections became two movements, didn't they?
Yes, and of course it went from there
because in the end the piece became really long.
It actually became six movements.
Let's say one of the movements -
I liked to use the idea of the whole building,
how there was one staircase I saw with these concrete squares on it,
and they are kind of lopsided as if they are falling off.
I was told the engineer wanted that as a special kind of statement.
Anyway, it seemed like a very witty thing to do.
And I just loved that idea that you just do something
just to have a bit of fun.
It had something very surreal about it. I just loved it.
So I thought I would write a piece called 'Industrial blues',
so it's kind of bluesy but also quite heavy.
(music plays)
- like that.
It feels like something stuck to the ground, I always think, a very solid movement.
But also a little bit - occasionally it has this -
(music plays)
it sort of sidesteps or what you call twists to the side.
I think around the corner, that sort of thing.
Like bits of the building just setting off
kind of thing in the middle of the design.
Exactly, so that was nice.
Then there was a movement I wrote based on the Schubert fantasy -
the Schubert Fantasy for four hands piano which goes approximately like this -
(music plays)
like that approximately with four hands.
I just thought I will write a movement
that may not have to do with the history of this place and these exhibitions
but it has history of me and how I played this piece.
I just thought even though it has nothing to do with the objects,
I will write it anyway
because it could be part of this whole process and it becomes history in itself.
I kind of look forward
and I think eventually it will make sense,
but at this point I really felt like doing something with this piece.
I have always wanted to do that so I thought I'll do it here.
I wrote a piece based on brass instruments playing this -
(music plays)
it became a very nice kind of fun piece, I think.