Allegro Largo Scherzo Finale

NZSO with Collin Currie (percussion), conducted by Alexander Shelley at the Michael Fowler Centre Aaron Copland: Appalachian Spring Suite Jennifer Higdon: Percussion Concerto Lyell Cresswell: Landscapes of the Soul Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony No. 6 “Pastoral” First of all, I have not yet forgotten about the NYO. At some point I’ll hopefully write something about [...]

Schumann: Piano Concerto in A Minor Shostakovich: Symphony No. 11 “The Year 1905” New Zealand School of Music Orchestra at St. Andrew’s on the Terrace conducted by Ken Young with Diedre Irons, piano There are two other concerts I had planned on writing about before getting to this one – but that was before actually [...]

I managed to mix up the programmes for the final NZSO tour, which meant that I missed the concert with the premiere of Leif Segerstam’s Symphony No. 191 Presumably it will turn up on RNZ Concert sometime, but right now I can only comment on the attention that the concert has received in the Dominion [...]

Part three of a series examining the curious lack of new symphonies. Part Two is here. Culprit #5: Musical Directors Throughout much of the early 20th Century, European audiences knew American composers as specialists in short orchestral works full of charming folk tunes; it was widely believed that there was no such thing as an [...]

7. Schoenberg: Verklaerte Nacht; Schumann: Cello Concerto; Brahms arr. Schoenberg: Piano Quintet It will certainly be interesting to see how the combination of Schoenberg and Schumann succeeds here. Although it might seem as if the NZSO is moving somewhat out of the repertoire comfort zone with the one-and-a-half doses of Schoenberg, this is somewhat misleading. [...]