It was refreshing to have a programme entirely of New Zealand compositions.  It made for a most enjoyable concert, in fact more so than numbers of piano recitals I have attended. One infrequently hears music by father and son of the same family (perhaps occasionally the Mozarts, Leopold and Wolfgang), so it was a distinct pleasure to hear music by both John and Anthony Ritchie.  The geniality of the writing... read more

The Bach Choir is one of Wellington’s more distinguished choirs, founded in 1968 by the late Anthony Jennings, a notable harpsichordist and one of New Zealand’s leaders  in the revival of interest in the authentic performance of baroque and early music. Though the choir’s fortunes have fluctuated over the years, it has experienced a steady improvement in performance standards and confidence under Stephen Rowley. Vivaldi’s transition from a minor, one-piece composer... read more

Praise be to Stuart Douglas and the Kapiti Chamber Choir for giving Kapiti residents the opportunity to hear arguably the best Christmas music ever written, Bach’s Christmas Oratorio. Accompanied by an excellent orchestral ensemble they gave an enormously joyful performance from the first thrilling trumpet notes of Andrew Weir’s piccolo trumpet to the full bodied final chorale. They were obviously in the hands of a conductor with a great... read more

Stroma brought up the 100th anniversary of Arnold Schoenberg's landmark creation Pierrot Lunaire in unique style at Wellington's Ilott Theatre, as part of a program featuring the music of both pupils and contemporaries of the composer. Naturally, the concert's focus centered firmly on Pierrot Lunaire, with the advance publicity's imagery suggesting a theatrical presentation, one featuring the extremely gifted singer Madeleine Pierard. This performance took up the second half of... read more

The last of the series of concerts from The Tudor Consort that sought connections between music of the Renaissance and the present gave rise to the most recondite relationship with links that drew together the medieval story of Tristram and Iseult (as it is in Matthew Arnold’s narrative poem), and a little known work of Messiaen, Cinq rechants (‘five refrains’) for 12 unaccompanied singers. The Cinq rechants form the third... read more

The members of this fine English trio were here as part of the panel judging entires for the Pettman/Royal Over-seas League scholarship. They have made time to perform in several centres around New Zealand and this was the first of three concerts in the Wellington Region – the others are at Waikanae and Greytown. Several of them have been devoted to musical charities. This one at Parliament, hosted by the... read more

Once upon a time the Opera Society used to present regular recitals, every month or so. Then, as opportunities multiplied for singers to appear in professional and amateur productions and in recitals at the university schools of music, the screening of opera films slowly became more common and the society’s recital programme diminished. Instead, there are monthly screenings of operas on DVD. British-born, Lisa Harper-Brown has worked in Australia for... read more

The last concert of the 2012 series by the Wellington Orchestra attracted a very big house. If the major attraction was Houstoun and the Rachmaninov, there would have been a lot of empty seats after the interval, which is sometimes the case when a little known piece is to fill the second half. From the almost unchanged audience after the interval, I have to assume that a lot of... read more

With this concert the Wellington Youth Sinfonietta marked 20 years years of age (or should it be next year? – it was founded in 1993. There is a tendency to follow the Roman numbering system which was to count the year of a birth or a beginning as year one, so that the completion of that first year is named as year two. The same counting oddity was widely... read more

The name Ludwig Treviranus came to my notice when he played in his last high school years in the Hutt Valley, before moving to study music under Rae de Lisle at Auckland University. At that stage there was already a certain flair, a feeling for the dramatic in music, and they were the characteristics most clearly evident in the two pieces he played on this short return visit from... read more