I last heard Vox Serbicus in 2007 and was impressed then by their skill and their grasp of the idiom of the Serbian liturgical and folk music they sang.  Part of the reason for my enjoyment of the music, which I’d first heard from them in 2004, was the effect of trips through Serbia when I was living in Greece in the 60s, and was susceptible to the music of all the Balkan countries. I still am, but I have to confess to a little disappointment this week. This lunchtime concert, in this beautiful church, so visually appropriate to the...  Read More »

This was my introduction to the work of “Boutique Opera”, a company whose activities are based around the studio of Wellington singing teacher, Lesley Graham, and which gives aspiring singers the chance of performing experience on stage in operas and musicals. The productions today, in collaboration with the New Zealand Opera Society, featured an adaptation of Mozart’s “The Magic Flute” for young singers, and a complete performance of the same composer’s youthful singspiel “Bastien and Bastienne”. In their entirely different ways, both performances were immense fun to watch, it being a fascinating, instructive and rewarding notion to set a novice...  Read More »

I believe the audience for this concert in the Ilott Theatre was a little larger than had been expected, perhaps due to the presence of another contributor, NZSO principal double bass player, Hiroshi Ikematsu. Many will have heard him in concert with chamber groups and word could have got out that he was a player of remarkable accomplishment and talent. My initial thought, looking at the programme, was that this piece by Dvořák may not have been a very clever choice to display his skill and musicality. At the end of the concert, this feeling was still lurking. However, the concert began...  Read More »

I must admit to having been thrilled at the NZSO’s programming of one of my all-time favourite warhorses, Rimsky-Korsakov’s symphonic suite Scheherazade in the subscription concert series, but less keen about having Tchaikovsky’s hotch-potch battle-symphony-like Overture “1812” on the same programme, mainly through having heard so many routine performances of it. Also offered was a contemporary work for clarinet and orchestra written by a Finnish composer, Jukka Tiensuu, and featuring the astounding playing (judging by what I heard in another concert) of visiting clarinettist Kari Kriikku. So, with reservations about the Tchaikovsky, all was good, including the time-slot, which must...  Read More »

For me, Elijah is a problematic work. In terms of its fans, it seems to draw a line in the sand between paid-up choral music groupies, particularly traditional deists, and other music lovers whose interests lie, to varying degrees, with chamber music, or orchestral music, or opera. The latter groups suspect that the popularity of Elijah derives from its religious subject, and from its kinship with the great choral works on religious topics by Bach and Handel.  In New Zealand and other ex-British countries, it might have more to do with the musical tastes of the expanding middles classes in...  Read More »