Here was a most interesting programme, introduced in an engaging manner by conductor Rachel Hyde, who attempted to demonstrate the essential musical quality of Shakespeare’s language and the way in which music permeated Shakespeare’s work and Tudor society in general. For example, she said that someone had counted some 300 musical stage directions in the plays. To her credit, Hyde kept away from the most common settings of the songs... read more

With an interesting programme for an unusual combination, this programme had added appeal for the opportunity to hear and see someone we know as a disembodied voice on radio; Clarissa Dunn is a presenter for Radio New Zealand Concert. The recital began and ended with performances from the gallery, using the fine church organ.  Clarissa Dunn proved to have a full, florid voice with a velvety quality except in the... read more

First on the programme were three Italian arias, which unfortunately I missed, which was a pity if only because apparently Sharon Yearsley accompanied herself on the piano – an unusual practice, which it would have been interesting to observe. I’m told that it gave the performance an intimate character, and that the arias were beautifully sung.

Two of the performers are members of... read more

I spent the first part of this concert luxuriating in some glorious madrigal singing from the talented Australian vocal ensemble The Song Company, touring the country under the auspices of Chamber Music New Zealand. The ensemble's programming enabling me to enjoy and marvel at both the similarities and differences between the English and Italian schools of renaissance vocal composition. The English group, which began the programme, contained some... read more

While it is a pity that there was no university opera this year, after the brilliant Semele last year, the concert in which 10 opera scenes were performed was quite an ambitious undertaking.  There was considerable variety, but enough of each opera to give more than a taste, and to allow the singers to really get into the characters.  It is good news for music in this country that... read more

A wide-ranging programme gave opportunity for NZSM students of Richard Greager, Margaret Medlyn, Flora Edwards and Jenny Wollerman to demonstrate their skills. The printed programme did not state, but I suspect some of these students are at an early stage of their study. However, all acquitted themselves well in front of an audience, and did not exhibit obvious signs of nervousness.

All sang... read more

This concert was advertised as part of St Paul’s Lutheran Church’s regular concerts, many of them associated with the church’s normal vespers services, when Bach cantatas, eventually all of them, are performed. But this was different. Peter Walls (in other lives, Professor of Music at Victoria University and now CEO of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra) had talked during the week on RNZ Concert’s Upbeat, and in his introduction to the... read more

No work has inspired more disagreements among both scholars and musicians regarding both its history and performance practice than Monteverdi's Vespers of 1610. The British musicologist Denis Arnold once wrote about the work, "To perform it is to court disaster. To write about it is to alienate some of one's best friends". Happily for Wellington audiences, no such strictures seemed to hang over the head of Musica Sacra concert... read more

Geoffrey de Lautour: opera singer, teacher of music in schools, private singing teacher, raconteur, was remembered, ten years after his death. Fellow Dunedin-born singer Roger Wilson introduced the concert with a brief biography of de Lautour. The latter’s involvement in opera in New Zealand, following a career in Britain, has been outlined in his autobiography. Wilson emphasised the hands-on work of the old New... read more

Over recent weeks Felicity Smith has demonstrated her expertise in several periods of music, in a lunch-hour concert in Lower Hutt and at the Concours de Chanson French-language song competition.  Her clear, flexible voice suited the baroque repertoire particularly well. Accompaniment for the items in the first half was provided by a chamber organ, which made scrumptious sounds under the expert hands of Richard Apperley.  His playing was sublime, and... read more