Cantoris are to be congratulated on a very good performance of Karl Jenkins’s The Armed Man, as is their new director, Brian O’Regan, and accompanying musicians. As soon as the first drum tattoo echoed through St Andrews, I was glad to be there. The choir made a wonderful start as well, producing a rich and full sound that filled the church. Indeed, it was the warmth and depth of the... read more

With some surprise I read in the Stroma program booklet that this was in fact the SECOND "Mirror of Time" Concert presented by the Ensemble, following on from an occasion in 2012 - had I recently awakened from a kind of "Rip Van Winkel" sleep, or something? I had been to and reviewed a couple of Stroma concerts that year, but I couldn't remember a "Mirror of Time" title... read more

Musical recognition of ANZAC Day (apart from ritualised hymns) has not been a common thing, as far as I can remember. And looking back over the record of reviews in Middle C, I can find no significant concerts, at least since 2008, that attempted to mark the day. The last with any sort of connection was a small chamber music concert that accompanied an exhibition of Gallipoli paintings by artist... read more

St. Mark’s Church, Lower Hutt, was a venue perfectly suited to a delightful concert by an ensemble such as the New Zealand Guitar Quartet. The warm, yet clear, acoustics showcased the players’ complete technical mastery of their instruments, and enhanced the musical sensitivity of the recital. The relatively intimate scale of the space supported the informal rapport with the audience that the players developed by their commentary on the... read more

The members of that musical gem of the Kapiti Coast, the Kapiti Chamber Choir, have reason to be well pleased with their new conductor Eric Sidoti. His debut concert with them at St Paul's church in Paraparaumu on Sunday, April 21 had everybody, singers and audience, smiling. They presented a well chosen and balanced programme entitled The Romantics, a pleasing mix of the familiar and the unknown. The delightful... read more

For some reason I hadn't really registered before this concert just how big a space at St.Andrew's Church a small ensemble has to fill with sound, both behind the musicians and above them. It seemed to my ears when the Aroha Quartet began their Beethoven which opened the concert that everything was set back, as opposed to "being in one's face", and that the instrumental timbres were more than... read more

Recitals by visiting instrumentalists are not nearly as frequent as they were when the old Concert Section of the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation promoted recitals by artists who were here to play concertos with the Symphony Orchestra.  So it is gratifying that the New Zealand School of  Music has taken up some of the slack in Wellington by bringing overseas musicians to conduct master classes for the students and... read more

I heard four of these same singers perform last October, in Upper Hutt (9 October 2012), and my remarks then in some cases still apply; in others, the singers have noticeably improved their skills and performances.  Elisabeth Harris I heard in the master-class run by Denis O’Neill after the Lexus Song Quest last year.  Her singing has certainly moved onwards and upwards since then. First, though, we heard from Oliver... read more

The music of theUnited States, in the common perception, is so dominated by jazz, spirituals and various other kinds of popular music, that I have to confess to a degree of surprise to encounter music that might have been written in Europe. And that, in spite of my perfectly decent familiarity with a lot of the classical music of theUnited States.  The first two pieces were for flute and piano... read more

One of the highest accolades a musician can receive is to have his or her name indelibly associated in people's minds with that of a particular composer's music - and more than any other pianist in this part of the world, Michael Houstoun's name has become practically synonymous with Beethoven. It's not been an association lightly or casually wrought - it's grown and developed over a span of time and... read more