This was an important series of ten concerts by the New Zealand String Quartet, in five centres nationwide; it included two different programmes, of all three of Schumann’s quartets and four of Shostakovich's 15. I heard the first of the two programmes at the church of St Mary of the Angels on Saturday the 28th, which my colleague Peter Mechen has reviewed (that programme had also been played a week earlier in the Hunter Council Chamber at Victoria University) and the second on Tuesday 31 August, also in the Hunter Council Chamber. There were probably round 200 at St Mary’s and...  Read More »

This concert was advertised as part of St Paul’s Lutheran Church’s regular concerts, many of them associated with the church’s normal vespers services, when Bach cantatas, eventually all of them, are performed. But this was different. Peter Walls (in other lives, Professor of Music at Victoria University and now CEO of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra) had talked during the week on RNZ Concert’s Upbeat, and in his introduction to the concert, about its nature and aim, offering interesting bits of scholarship about violin practice as well as about the byways of music in 18th century Britain. The great Italian violinist and composer,...  Read More »

The Bach Choir has a distinguished history in Wellington since 1968, when it was founded by the gifted organist and musical scholar Anthony Jennings. Like all choirs, its fortunes have fluctuated: for the past two years it has regained its position, directed by Stephen Rowley; its recent achievements have included the B Minor Mass, Elijah, a concert of Handel and Purcell, and Bach’s Christmas Oratorio. It was an adventurous concert. In Frank Martin’s Mass for Double Choir the two choirs of about 20 singers each, were placed diagonally, at right angles to each other, facing the conductor.  But ideally it needed more...  Read More »

The habit of reviewers reporting, in mock wonderment, that the concert by the current incarnation of the National Youth Orchestra has offered the most exciting and committed symphony concert of the year, or decade, has become traditional, almost a ritual. Such claims are made in all good faith and in the hope of being seen as friends of the young and apostles of hope that the mature population will follow the lead of youth. To do otherwise is very difficult, especially when the facts obviously favour the tradition. Especially this time; for not only was this perhaps the most uniformly talented...  Read More »

My colleague Rosemary Collier allowed herself to lament that so many choirs had scheduled their concerts in such a short span this month; and the overload continues. On Wednesday 11th there was a concert by the choir of Sacred Heart Cathedral, augmented by singers from Christine Argyle’s Nota Bene, who had joined forces with the Choir of Christchurch Boys’ High School, conducted by Don Whelan. They sang Widor’s Mass for Two Choirs and Two Organs; I heard about it too late and was very disappointed to have missed it. This past weekend, there have been two performances of Monteverdi‘s monumental Vespers...  Read More »