Good Music in Sheds The “Shed series” of concerts were a new enterprise for the NZSO last year, when there were three concerts of music that was a bit off the beaten track and in an atmosphere unfamiliar to traditional audiences, though essentially classical rather than popular or rock music; perhaps the word 'crossover' might here apply. Last year, it was suggested that they would appeal to audiences aged under... read more

With concerts by two string quartets, the New Zealand String Quartet and the Aroha Quartet within two days, the Brodsky quartet on the 20th and the Kiwa quartet on the 26th of May seems like a festival of string quartets. With so much music, it is the works that challenge that makes these concerts memorable. The Aroha Quartet played Mozart and Beethoven, beautiful but familiar music, but it was György Ligeti's... read more

Tonight’s concert began with a sobering reminder of the tragedy that had shaken the whole of the country just over a fortnight previously, audience and musicians alike standing for a minute’s silence in remembrance of the incident’s victims, conductor Edo de Waart eschewing his “maestro’s entrance” on this occasion, and accompanying his concertmaster, Vesa-Matti Leppänen onto the concert platform, to stand with the other performers. As this was the... read more

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

Well, it was quite a night for Orchestra Wellington! – in front of an enthusiastic and appreciative audience at the Michael Fowler Centre on Saturday evening the musicians put everything they had into making the final night of the orchestra’s 2018 concert season one to remember. We were presented with a line-up of pieces which, if perhaps not all sure-fire crowd-pleasers, perfectly expressed the desire of the orchestra’s organisers... read more

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

This is the second concert with overt connections to the recent 125^th suffrage anniversary that I’ve recently reviewed, very different to the earlier one (Cantoris Choir, Wellington), though packing a similarly powerhouse punch on behalf of women’s musical creativity. It was titled Braid, and is one of three concert series given by the trio this year featuring the work of women composers, the other two being called Weave and Twine. As with Cantoris Choir’s presentation... read more

2018 marks the 125^th anniversary of women’s suffrage in New Zealand.  On 19 September 1893 the Electoral Act 1893 was passed, giving all women in New Zealand the right to vote.  As a result of this landmark legislation, New Zealand became the first self-governing country in the world in which all women had the right to vote in parliamentary elections. Cantoris Choir in Wellington presented a concert of works on the... read more

This second concert that I’ve attended which featured the voices of Inspirare, a choir founded by their director, Mark L.Stamper, couldn’t have been more different from the first one (an inspirational performance of Sergei Rachmaninov’s All Night Vigil earlier this year), but was equally impressive in achieving what it had obviously set out to do. In the same venue as where the previous concert had held its audience spellbound... read more

Eighteen years into the 21^st Century a lot of music-lovers are still coming to grips with the innovators and radical figures of twentieth-century music. It’s a process which was in some ways mirrored a century ago by the fin de siècle attitude of many people to the works of Berlioz, Liszt, Mussorgsky, Bruckner and Mahler, all of whom had to wait for a “later time”, at which stage their creative... read more