It’s 20 years since I heard Leif Segerstam conducting the NZSO, and the memory is of a highly gifted musician blessed with an eccentric’s sense of humour, enlivened with an intelligence and vivacity that sets him apart in his profession. His notes to his 191st symphony also reveal a fascination with numerology which he applies playfully to several strands of his life. Not that a whimsical delight in numbers is altogether foreign to musicians: Bach was similarly absorbed, at least according a lot of his commentators, and so was Schoenberg. Segerstam’s own notes about the symphony and certain other matters...  Read More »

This splendid concert took its name from the title of a song by Robert Schumann, "Stille Liebe", one of the twelve "Kerner-Lieder" written during the composer's "year of song" (1839-40). Tonight's performance of the whole set of these songs by mezzo-soprano Annabel Cheetham and pianist Mary Barber was merely one of the pleasures to be had from a most enjoyable evening's music-making. More Schumann came from the brother-and-sister duo of Mary Barber and violist Peter Barber, a transcription for viola and piano of Three Fantasiestücke Op.73. The second half of the concert featured firstly a full trio of musicians performing...  Read More »

The series of recitals by senior students at the New Zealand School of Music continued at the lunchtime concerts at St Andrew’s with three musicians playing bassoon, clarinet and flute. Young bassoon player Alex Chan won a scholarship to study as an orchestral bassoon player at the Kennedy Centre in Washington D.C. where she was co-winner of the SMI Concerto Competition. She has played with the Wellington Orchestra, the Southern Sinfonia, and the National Youth Orchestra. Her first sounds, the sprightly dotted rhythms of Weber’s Bassoon Concerto marked her as an already polished professional; with pianist Douglas Mews standing in...  Read More »

This final concert in the 2009 season of Chamber Music New Zealand, was a brilliant ending to the year; and General Manager Euan Murdoch announced the 2010 season, CMNZ’s 60th anniversary year which opens with a concert in the International Festival next March from the great Borodin String Quartet. The first half belonged to the St Lawrence Quartet, from Canada. The Quartet in F was the last Haydn completed and though it’s not as familiar as several of those in the immediately preceding sets, it is highly original in character, and in this remarkable performance exhibited qualities that even Haydn...  Read More »

We have been hearing a series of lunchtime concerts at St Andrew’s by present and former students of the New Zealand School of Music in recent weeks. This one maintained the level of excellence both in the appearance of highly accomplished performers and in interesting music. Rafaella Garlick-Grice began with a very mature and well-considered performance of the Prelude and Fugue in G from Book II of the Well-tempered Clavier. Varying her posture at the piano from upright to a hunched effort to climb inside the instrument, her playing was virtually flawless, but more importantly, shining with intelligence and engaging...  Read More »