Kurt Sanderling, who died last year in Berlin at the age of 98, was a name known to me from my formative days of record-collecting, through his 1950s recording made with the Leningrad Phllharmonic of Rachmaninov's Second Symphony - one of those early cotton-stitched white-and-yellow panelled Deutsche Grammophon LP covers with the composer's facsimile autograph scribbled across the central vertical yellow panel (all very tasteful and esoteric, obviously aimed at... read more

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

Unfortunately, I missed the first item on the programme, hence the question mark above, which is based on the biographical information in the concert programme.  That item was a traditional French song, Le Sommeil de l’enfant Jesus. Rhapsodie sur des Noëls, an organ piece by Eugene Gigout (1844-1925) was played by Paul Rosoman on the main organ, in the gallery.  The piece featured variations on the Christmas carol we know... read more

A full Town Hall auditorium and a stage crowded with a great orchestra of some 85 players, put me in mind of the Town Hall concerts that an NZSO of 30 years ago could sell out. An entirely French programme was the perfect response to the Wellington Orchestra’s encounter with the wonderful Swedish mezzo who has indeed cultivated a special gift in the language and music of France. As Marc Taddei... 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

It’s a few years since I heard either of these singers in a solo recital of any kind. This lunchtime concert was such an enterprising and attractive event that I felt real regret that the audience was so small, though not very different from the audiences that usually come. The real sadness is the failure of the Lower Hutt City Council to save the Laing’s Road Methodist Church... read more

The contest that was The Evening Post aria contest for many years continues in good heart. This year, the contestants were all past or present students of the New Zealand School of Music, and almost all had been recently through a period of very hard work, as cast members of the brilliant, highly entertaining and successful production of Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

It is therefore... read more

This concert both played the game and bended the rules in the most interesting possible way - we had what's become a common orchestral concert format of introductory work, concerto and symphony, but most interestingly constituted and creatively "placed", so that the feeling of "the same old formula" was nicely avoided. Basically, it was a Schubert/Mozart evening, but with a major contribution from a more-or-less contemporary voice. This was the... read more