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 »

Because JS Bach's Mass in B Minor is such an established part of the choral repertoire, it's interesting to reflect on the somewhat piecemeal origins of the work - as an entity it was assembled by the composer in 1749, one year before his death, but parts of it were actually composed up to almost thirty years before, with some of these parts intended for other works - the Sanctus dates from 1724, and the Kyrie and Gloria come from 1733, used by the composer in one of his "Lutheran" Masses - though ironically the Latin settings suggest the Catholic...  Read More »

Over recent weeks Felicity Smith has demonstrated her expertise in several periods of music, in a lunch-hour concert in Lower Hutt and at the Concours de Chanson French-language song competition.  Her clear, flexible voice suited the baroque repertoire particularly well. Accompaniment for the items in the first half was provided by a chamber organ, which made scrumptious sounds under the expert hands of Richard Apperley.  His playing was sublime, and musically supportive. The opening hymn by Purcell, Lord, what is man? was quite lovely, and gave the audience a taste of what would be a treat throughout the concert: the splendid acoustics...  Read More »

Elizabeth Wallfisch is one of the great “characters” of early music performance world-wide, as her inspirational skills, enthusiasm, and down-to-earth sense of fun as a performer amply demonstrated in the Wallfisch Band’s recent Wellington Town Hall concert. This was no ordinary event featuring a standard “touring ensemble”, but the most recent in a series of projects by the Band, the idea for which was begun by Wallfisch in 2008. This was to bring together a core group of skilled seasoned performers and a number of promising younger players as a kind of “living masterclass” experience for the young musicians...  Read More »

Perhaps this concert was presented by the New Zealand School of Music because Polly Sussex was in town; she had played in the weekend with the baroque/classical ensemble Musica Lyrica at St Paul’s Lutheran church in Mount Cook. Sussex teaches at Auckland University and has an international reputation as a specialist in the early cello and viola da gamba. The ensemble, formed with the support of the church to perform Bach cantatas in their original Lutheran setting, comprises a total of about 15 musicians, varying according to requirements.  In its advertising the concert was characterized by a Latin proverb Musica laetitiae...  Read More »