Now that Wellington has a City Organist to help ensure the better use of one of the greatest, substantially unmodified, organs of its kind in the world, it is good that a recital series is under way.

This one was entitled Vive la France and it celebrated, after a fashion, French organ music. I can understand the motivation for... read more

As was the case with Cantoris’s previous concert “Amaryllis and Absalom”,  both the venue, the gorgeously-appointed St.Peter’s Church on Willis St, and a beautifully laid-out booklet programme containing commentaries and texts of the song-settings, admirably set the scene for the choir’s most recent exploration of  the choral repertoire, an attractive programme entitled “Simple Song”. Cantoris director Rachel Hyde welcomed us to the concert and talked briefly about each bracket... read more

The collaboration of two groups, vocal and instrumental, under the title Musica Sacra, has been presenting a series of concerts in the latter part of the year at St Mary of the Angels for a number of years. As far as I’m aware, the Academia performs in no other context, but Baroque Voices has a long-standing presence in Wellington as a chamber choir. This was the first of the three... read more

We were packed in with a vengeance at the Paekakariki Memorial Hall on Sunday afternoon, our seats almost at the very back and with little or no sight-lines extending to the musicians (the floor has no raised platform for the performers), causing me some anxieties regarding being able to fully “connect” with the music-making. I needn’t have worried – over the heads of the... read more

Though it is fair to say that Wellington’s taste for new music is probably more adventurous than that of other major cities, it may well have been the pulling power of musicians of such distinction as these that attracted an around 80 percent audience to a programme containing two contemporary works, one newly commissioned and the other probably unfamiliar to 95 percent of the audience. There were... read more

The orchestra undertook an “all-main centres” tour with this programme, finishing in Wellington on a Saturday afternoon in August. Both visiting artists, pianist Alexander Melnikov and conductor Mark Wigglesworth had elicited glowing opinions for previous overseas performances of some of the featured works, and had already been praised by local critics for their work with the orchestra in its other “Great Romantics” programme. So it was with the highest... read more