"Camille Saint-Saëns was wracked with pains, When people addressed him as "Saint-Saynes"; He held the human race to blame, because it could not pronounce his name." Readers who remember Ogden Nash's verses will sympathise further with Camille Saint-Saëns in his predicament at being known as a composer primarily for his zoological fantasy "Carnival of the Animals", though his "Organ" Symphony and several of his concertos for violin, for 'cello and for piano, have always figured in concert programmes. All gratitude, therefore, to the Festival Singers here in Wellington, for presenting in concert a relative rarity, the composer's Mass Op.4, written in 1856 when Saint-Saëns...  Read More »

It was good to hear these five performers joining forces to perform Brahms. What was surprising was that in a printed programme emanating from an academic institution, no numbers, keys, or opus numbers were recorded (the invaluable Grove assisted me here). Neither were they mentioned in the brief spoken introductions given by the performers. My notes say that the quartet was described by Martin Riseley as being first performed in 1868; perhaps I misheard – Grove says 1861. Technicalities aside, these were enjoyable performances. Perhaps it is not surprising that the Ilott Theatre was almost full for this free...  Read More »

(A "guest review" by Peter Coates of this concert appears at the end of this article) Enthusiasts for fine orchestral playing would have been thoroughly diverted by the chance to compare the NZSO’s playing of the Mozart “Jupiter” Symphony in this concert with that of those recent visitors to this country for the International Arts Festival, the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra. Unfortunately I didn’t get to the concert at which the latter played this particular work, although I did hear the “Prague”, and thus was able to glean something of the orchestra’s style and their particular sound. What struck me with the NZSO’s performance...  Read More »

We are in the season of mid-year, students’ recitals from the New Zealand School of Music; in this, we had five women and one man in a programme that was varied and delightful. Though I missed the first three songs, from Imogen Thirlwall and Xingxing Wang, they both reappeared later so that I could gain some impression of their talents. Laura Dawson had just begun Der Nüssbaum from Schumann’s cycle Myrthen as I entered and I was at first enchanted by the simple beauty of her voice and its easy delivery, even in quality throughout its range; her style was appropriate, warm...  Read More »

Christine Argyle's "Nota Bene" Choir got the mix right for their Mother's Day concert,  with a programme of music whose first half did strong, sonorous homage to Mary, the Virgin Mother of God, before paying tribute after the interval to ordinary, everyday mothers, with songs of affection, remembrance, and wry humour - and finishing with "Rytmus", Ivan Hrušovsky's well-known "choral etude" in praise of Eve, the first human mother, as a brief, but exciting finale. With a waiata-like guitar-accompanied opening (actually called "Ka Waiata" and written by Richard Puanaki), and featuring greetings and spoken commentaries by theatre and television personality...  Read More »