(N.B. Ross Harris has drawn my attention to a mistake and to a couple of other misunderstandings in my review and the review has now been amended.Wednesday 10 March) The series of lunchtime and early evening concerts at St Andrew’s opened with a highly diverting concert of Klezmer music – the music of the Jewish cultures of Eastern Europe, whose traditional language is Yiddish, derived from Middle High German, mixed with Hebrew, Aramaic, Slav and Romance languages. The group's name, Kugeltov, dervives from Kugel which means ‘ball’ in German. A Kugel is a staple of Jewish cooking and it originally referred...  Read More »

Occupying one of just two chamber music concerts in evening slots in the Festival, this superb group was co-promoted by Chamber Music New Zealand and, as far as the Festival is concerned, may well not have contributed to visitors coming from other parts of the country since the Borodin Quartet is touring all ten centers in which CMNZ performs. There was a full house, in any case. Their all-Russian programme might not have been very adventurous but the pieces are undoubtedly among the greatest in the repertory. The first thing that struck me was the feeling of ease and the...  Read More »

This turned out to be a highly impressive and enjoyable recital of two famous works. Valerie Rigg played with the NZSO  for 19 years, eventually as principal first violin, and she also had a professional career in England, Germany and Canada. She now lives again in Wellington. She and Tessa Olivier (who emigrated from South Africa in 2002) played these pieces at a September concert at Old St Paul’s, which I heard.  This week’s performance displayed a noticeable advance in their playing of both pieces. Wikipedia states that the manuscript ascribed the Chaconne to “one ‘Tommaso Vitallino’ who may or...  Read More »

These three players have been tantalizing us with Strauss’s youthful, highly coloured violin sonata, with performances of just the first two movements (at Paekakariki) and of the Improvisation movement alone (at the Friends of the NZSO concert a week earlier); I'd heard both. Here at last we heard the whole thing, though it was not without its curiosity even here. As the players prepared to start the second movement (Improvisation), Cristina dashed off to get her mute; she then played her first two notes – alone; Catherine got up from the piano and went out and when she didn’t come...  Read More »

This programme of string quartets by New Zealand composers is being recorded by Atoll Records, the enterprise serving as a well-deserved tribute to not only the composers but also the New Zealand String Quartet for their advocacy of home-grown music over the years. And although a number of these works have been recorded before by the same ensemble, it's a splendid idea to bring together the group's updated "take" on pieces that have either already are or else show signs of becoming classic genre works in the ever-burgeoning stockpile of New Zealand compositions. Pieces like John Psathas's Abhisheka have already...  Read More »