Waikanae Memorial Hall Sunday 11 July 2010, 2.30pm A well-filled Memorial Hall enjoyed a treat of poetry on the piano. John-Paul Muir is young, but in total command of the piano. He makes the instrument his own, and he has thought a lot about his interpretations. He played entirely without the scores in front of him. A very slow start to the first Beethoven sonata made it all the more dramatic. Muir’s playing featured gorgeous pianissimos such as some pianists never achieve. He has a light touch when required, and knows how to achieve a lovely legato. But he can certainly turn on...  Read More »

Schumann's Kreisleriana was the centrepiece of this interesting concert by a pianist unknown to everyone there, I imagine. Of Taiwanese origin, Ya-Ting Liou's abbreviated CV discloses connections with Canada, the United States, and Argentina; she currently teaches at the University of Missouri in Kansas City. She opened with an arrangement of Bach's 'Sheep May Safely Graze', sounding slightly ill-at-ease, and Chopin's second Ballade was given to transitions in mood and tempo that did not convince me. Her intention may have been to illustrate her reading of whatever narrative is thought to have lain beneath the surface of the piece; marked...  Read More »

New Zealand composers putting their creative talents up for auctioning online? Local music patrons, sponsors and benefactors competing amongst themselves for compositional favours from our top composers? Amid the recent shivers caused by icy blasts directed by politicians and bureaucrats against music practitioners and disseminators such as the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra and Radio New Zealand Concert, this composer-inspired project from the Centre For New Zealand Music represented a skyful of sunbeams brightening up a naughty world. Five composers, all previous winners of the SOUNZ Contemporary Award, proposed to each write a work for solo instrument (or, as it turned...  Read More »

I last heard Buz Bryant-Greene in a masterclass conducted by Piers Lane at the 2009 Adam Chamber Music Festival in Nelson. I suspect he was not very comfortable there even though no one could have been more genial and sympathetic than Lane. So I was pleased to have this chance to hear him again, a young pianist from Nelson who has clearly made something of an impression as a performer around New Zealand and internationally. It was an interesting programme, though some would call it unadventurous; it is often nice to enjoy a concert that doesn't include new or difficult...  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 »