The 18th New Zealand Opera School at Whanganui has most of the things going for it that make some of the great music festival of Europe such lasting attractions: all it needs is a real festival to give it context.  Excellent music is performed by many talented and some highly polished musicians, in an old theatre that has been taken care of over the decades, in a city that... read more

What these recitals demonstrated was the very high standard of musicians emerging from university today.  All have had performance experience (once much harder to obtain than now), and have emerged fully rounded recitalists. It is sad that few members of the public attended the violin recital compared with those at the vocalists’; singers have more glamour and appeal, obviously. Tabea Squire played the Ciaconna from Bach’s Partita no.2 for solo violin... read more

This was the last of a monthly series of free concerts given by performance students from the New Zealand School of Music, that began in March.  It attracted a full house, there being over 100 people present.  All the singers presented their items with poise and confidence, and most were formally dressed.  Up to the last four items, all except three were from opera. The foyer has a fine acoustic... read more

Despite its billing, this was a concert comprising only viola students – those studying with Gillian Ansell, violist in the New Zealand String Quartet. It began with an additional item, not in the printed programme: Rhapsody by Ernest Bloch (which I conclude must be a movement from his Suite of 1919).  It was played by Alice McIvor, with Douglas Mews accompanying.  This was quite a passionate work, and the performers... read more

Concerts by youth orchestras ought to be filled with young people who come both to support their friends and school and university mates, and to savour the sort of music that we all first came to love in our youth. For if all too many schools no longer feel the need to furnish the minds of their pupils with the furniture of civilization, the responsibility for doing so now... read more

To hear 700 secondary school students from all around New Zealand singing together is thrilling indeed, as they did at the conclusion of this three-hour concert. The Wellington Town Hall has hosted much music through its life, but hearing this amount of excellent singing in such a good acoustic is ‘something else’, as is seeing and hearing three boys’ school choirs turning on impromptu haka at the... read more

This outing by the orchestra of the New Zealand School of Music (NZSM) was the opportunity to celebrate the winner of the school’s annual concerto competition. Curiously, nowhere in the programme was that fact recorded, even in the short biographical note about the saxophonist. The final round of the competition took place in the Adam Concert Room on 25 May when the four finalists played with piano accompaniment... read more

Recitals by woodwind players, and even more perhaps by brass players, draw on a range of music that is not very familiar to the run of ordinary classical music followers. For some that may be a disincentive. For lots of others, myself included, it’s very interesting and satisfying, for the music often offers a chance to hear composers who are no more than names... read more

The young pianist Hannah-Elizabeth Teoh comes from Wanganui and has been a student of Judith Clark in Wellington for five years. I had not heard her play before: her performances were insightful and remarkable.

She gave the sort of performance of Bach that utterly vindicates the playing of Bach on the piano, for every movement had a character and a spirituality that she had the sensibility to enrich... read more