In response to the “social distancing” restrictions put in place to prevent the spread of the Covid-19 virus, the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra has, since March 25^th of this year been giving free premieres of online performances on a newly-employed “microsite” enabling supporters of the orchestra and lovers of music in general to view some of the concerts originally scheduled for 2020. To this end, the orchestra has made... read more

This was a promising recital by three young women who have lived around Worser Bay in Wellington: two are sisters, the cellist a long-time friend. Both Tarrant-Matthews are violinists who have played in Orchestra Wellington and the NZSO, but are also proficient pianists; both graduated in music from Victoria University. Claudia who is violinist in the trio, has been studying at the Royal Academy of Music in London while... read more

If ever an organisation merited a special award for stickability in the face of troubles, it would, in my book, be Chamber Music Hutt Valley - after facing dissolution at the end of 2019 through difficulties in finding enough people “on the ground” to assist with running the concerts the Society overcame that problem only to find its well-crafted 2020 programme severely disrupted by Covid-19! The response was a... read more

With a single downbeat at the beginning of this concert from Camerata we were taken, it seemed to me, into a kind of youthful magicland of creative wonderment, via the eleven year-old Mozart’s Sinfonia from a sacred Singspiel Die Schuldigkeit des ersten Gebotes  (translated as “The Obligation of the First and Foremost Commandment”), a kind of allegorical depiction of the trials of a Christian soul. This was Mozart’s first... read more

Thanks to a newly-emerged Covid-19 chapter in Auckland we were a precautionary “restricted” audience for this concert, but of good cheer, nevertheless, with convivial company and food and drink available at the venue, the evocatively-named “The Third Eye - Tuatara’s Temple of Taste", from out of which scenario “emerged” the musicians, informally dressed and congregating at the platform end of the listening-space, six singers and a bass violist, all... read more

My horoscope for Friday 7^th August predicted that I "may get tempted to steal a short vacation in the midst of work” and, as it turned out, this prediction was indeed fulfilled when I entered St. Paul’s Cathedral at 12:40pm to thank God it was (finally) Friday. It was then and there that soprano Pepe Becker and the local early music group The Queen’s Closet presented a delightful selection of... read more

It’s a bit of a truism to say that Beethoven and his music represent a kind of apex of enduring creative expression for modern-day humankind; and while such pronouncements can be literally questioned in terms of world-wide demographics and cultural bias, they still carry weight in a kind of “perceived-by-many” fashion – it would be difficult to think of another composer whose music has penetrated such widespread spheres of... read more

The first concert, post-Covid-19 lock-down from Chamber Music New Zealand was held in a new auditorium which was opened in September last year: in the former Public Trust Office headquarters. The hall, presumably the former public area, with ceiling decoration that survived in banks half a century ago; a well-proportioned, elegant space. It seats 300 people, about the same size as the Ilott Theatre in the old Wellington Town... read more

Hurrah for the NZSO, one of the very few orchestras anywhere in the world able to give live concerts. The large audience showed its appreciation. For reasons not clear to this writer, the concert was labelled “Spirit” though there was nothing particularly spiritual about the programme. There was no narrative theme to the programme, but this didn't matter. Many in the audience came especially to hear the renowned New Zealand heldentenor, Simon O'Neill, star of the... read more

A recent feather in the cap of New Zealand film-making has been the inclusion of “The Turn of the Screw”, an adaptation of Henry James’s classic ghost story by Wellington director Alex Galvin, in the recent Shanghai film Festival. Within a few days of the Shanghai showing the film had its New Zealand premiere at the Embassy Theatre in Wellington, an event that was sold out. Its audience witnessed... read more