Put on Track 10 of this new Naxos CD for an irresistibly foot-tapping introduction to the three quartets by Alfred Hill you’ll find here, in characterful readings by the Dominion String Quartet. Hill was Australasia’s first “recognized” composer – though born in Melbourne, his formative years were spent in New Zealand, after which he studied in Leipzig, becoming steeped in the music of Brahms, Dvorak and Tchaikovsky. The first volume of Hill’s Quartets on Naxos (8.570491) show these European and nationalistic influences, whereas the works on this new CD find him gradually evolving a more austere and distinctive style. Like composers...  Read More »

The exhumation of mostly long-invisible recordings by New Zealand’s greatest pianist has been a slow and laborious exercise. Richard Farrell who died aged 31 in 1958 left only a small number of commercial recordings, although there is other evidence of his career surviving in the Radio New Zealand sound archive which I hope will also soon reach the light of day. I heard Farrell play more than once though I can pin-point only one concert in 1951 when I was a 6th former at Wellington College, as I still have his signed recital programme from the Wellington Town Hall. Atoll Records...  Read More »

Alfred Hill (1869-1960) A Birthday Celebration (139 years young) ALFRED HILL - String Quartets: Nos. 7 and 9 The Dominion String Quartet (Yury Gezentsvey, Rosemary Harris, violins / Donald Maurice, viola / David Chickering, ‘cello) Wadestown Presbyterian Church 16th December 2008 Introducing the music and the performers for this concert was Donald Maurice, the violist of the Dominion String Quartet, a musician and scholar who has worked tirelessly to re-establish the reputation and credentials of Alfred Hill as New Zealand’s first professional composer. He talked about the formation of the Quartet in response to the challenge of recording all seventeen of Alfred Hill’s works in this...  Read More »

J.S.BACH – Christmas Oratorio (Cantatas 1, 2 & 3) Nicola Edgecombe (soprano) Andrea Cochrane (alto) John Beaglehole (tenor) / Peter Russell (bass) Douglas Mews (continuo) The Chiesa Ensemble The Bach Choir of Wellington Directed by Stephen Rowley St.Andrew’s-on-the-Terrace, Wellington Sunday, 14th December 2008 Surely the first couple of pages of J.S.Bach’s “Christmas Oratorio” rate as one of the great musical openings – timpani calling everything to attention, flutes and oboes trilling joyously, and trumpets resounding with fanfares, heralding the festive approach of the processional, with its message of “praise, joy and gladness”. St.Andrew’s-on-the- Terrace reverberated with such glad sounds on Sunday afternoon, instrumentalists and choir launching into the work’s opening with...  Read More »

The New Zealand Opera Society is one of New Zealand’s longest-lived musical institutions, founded at the same time as the first home-grown opera company, the New Zealand Opera Company, in 1954. Its purpose was to be friends of the company. The company died in 1971, but the society knew that it still had a job to do, supporting opera wherever to emerged in New Zealand. It has survived one other major national company, based in Auckland, which lasted a mere three years. Since the 1970s the society whose main strength was, and still is, in Wellington, it publishes the monthly...  Read More »