Concertino [CF:PME08S]

Regarded as a New Zealand classic, Ritchie's Concertino (1960) takes its special force from what might be called the typically semi-detached New Zealand viewpoint. The Concertino is a superbly crafted achievement, its texture enriched by the idealism of the post-war English pastoralists, the neoclassicism of Walter Piston (who Ritchie studied with at Harvard in 1956-57), the delighted play of an imaginative harmonist, and the individualism of a New Zealander unconcerned with musical regionalism.