Known as �the elder statesman of New Zealand classical music�, Douglas Lilburn was instrumental in establishing a genuinely vernacular voice. All the works on this recording portray New Zealand�s culture through an idiom instantly recognisable to listeners familiar with the music of Sibelius and Vaughan Williams (one of Lilburn�s teachers). Amongst the best known are Aotearoa (Land of the long white cloud), A Song of Islands, a tone poem which finds its parallel in New Zealand regional paintings, and Lilburn�s first major orchestral work, the Drysdale Overture, a beautifully evocative depiction of the isolated hill country farm where the composer spent his childhood. Lilburn�s Three Symphonies can be heard on Naxos 8.555862.