Youthful and visionary Schubert from Helene Pohl and Jian Liu
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Janacek and Beethoven String Quartets from the amazing NZSQ at Te Kōkī New Zealand School of Music
By Peter Mechen, 25/03/2019
It all seemed too good to be true - here we were at a FREE CONCERT at the Adam Concert Room up at the University, about to be enthralled by the country’s most prestigious string quartet in two major works from the genre’s repertoire, one from the nineteenth and the other from the twentieth century, plus an additional piece from someone who’s proving to be a most interesting member... read more
Karori’s “Colours of Futuna” plays host to string quartet classics from the Orion Quartet
By Peter Mechen, 24/03/2019
Futuna Chapel was the venue for a sweet hour of marvellous music and music-making on the previous Sunday afternoon – here was the Orion Quartet, one whose work I hadn’t yet encountered “live”, presenting two of the classical repertoire’s “cornerstone” chamber works, in itself something of an irresistible prospect for any music-lover. With players from both the NZSO and Orchestra Wellington, informed by an interest in historical period practice... read more
Brahms’ String Quintets on Naxos – graceful, beautifully-lit readings by the NZSQ with Maria Lambros (viola)
By Peter Mechen, 23/03/2019
Playing and getting to know this disc recorded in Canada as long ago as 2016 has been, for me, a salutary experience on a couple of counts – firstly it’s been a recrimination of sorts, one that’s asked me in no uncertain tones of disapproval, why I hadn’t sought out and explored this venture by one of our most renowned and treasured musical ensembles before now! A different kind... read more
Chamber Music Hutt Valley to submit a winding-up motion at the 2019 AGM
By Lindis Taylor, 15/03/2019
The agenda of Chamber Music Hutt Valley’s AGM on Wednesday 27 March includes a motion that would wind up the society and bring its history of forty years of chamber music concerts in Lower Hutt to an end.
The motion reads:
“That the Executive is given the authority by this AGM to make CMHV inactive after the end of the 2019 season: the decision being based on a lack of committee... read more
Wilma and Friends win all hearts at Wellington Chamber Music’s first 2019 concert
By Peter Mechen, 13/03/2019
Beginning the year with the musical equivalent of a hiss and a roar is always a good sign for what might follow – and Wellington Chamber Music organisers can feel well-pleased with their opening offering for 2019, regarding both repertoire and the performances. In fact I sat there throughout this concert imagining, for some reason, how much “better” it all possibly might be were one in London, Berlin or... read more
Adam Chamber Music Festival in Nelson; the second installment, of Monday and Tuesday reviews
By Lindis Taylor, 05/02/2019
Perhaps the decision to celebrate the restoration of the organ in the Nelson School of Music took a slightly eccentric course, by programming some pieces by Mozart. For while Mozart is known to have enjoyed playing, especially improvising on, organs wherever he encountered them, he wrote scarcely anything specifically for the organ.
The Andante in F, K 616, written a short time before he died, is the only music that... read more
Adam Chamber Music Festival in Nelson: the first days
By Lindis Taylor, 03/02/2019
This was the first festival for five years that has been able to move back to the now magnificently enhanced Nelson School of Music (now called the Nelson Centre of Musical Arts). That, as well as the line-up of many top international musicians, saw the early sell-out of all but one of the nine superb evening concerts. That’s attributable also to the festival’s international reputation, attracting many people from... read more
Beautiful, visceral, hypnotic, disconcerting – Stroma’s “essential experimental” at Wellington’s Pyramid Club
By Peter Mechen, 29/11/2018
The venue really brought it all alive, in a way that I thought a more conventional concert-chamber-like place wouldn’t have done. In the most positive way we in the audience seemed to be “put at ease” by the “late-night club” surroundings at Taranaki Street’s Pyramid Club, and, rather than attending a concert, were instead made to feel we were “eavesdropping” on the ongoing creative processes constituting and shaping each... read more
Baroque music, rare and familiar, in a happy St Andrew’s concert
By Rosemary Collier, 28/11/2018
A larger-than-average audience came to hear this programme of a mixture of familiar and unfamiliar baroque works.
Sometimes musical (and other) works from the past are lost sight of because their worth is slight. This seemed to me to be true of the Cervetto piece. Extraordinary as it is to read of a a composer from 17th-18th centuries who lived to be at least 101 (c.1682-1783), his music didn’t live... read more
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