• 26 February 8pm: Mahler Symphony No. 8. Will be awesome. There is a free live broadcast in Civic Square, tickets for the real thing range from $46 to $176. I suspect that the $46 tickets will be really, really bad, probably a worse option than the broadcast, but probably that’s where I’ll end up.
• 5 March 8pm: Simon O’Neill sings a selection of Wagner. The Festival describes this as a “banquet of delights for opera-lovers”, but on the whole I’d rather have an actual opera, or at least a proper orchestral concert featuring contemporary music. In any case, didn’t essentially the same concert happen in Wellington fairly recently? Thanks are due to everybody who didn’t turn up at Resonances at the last festival – you’re the reason we can’t have nice things. $40-$125. Don’t throw your money away.
• 6-7 March between events: Breath of Wind, featuring the Levin Brass Band. I’ve no idea what this will actually sound/look like, but it’s free!
• 6 March 12pm: organ recital by John Wells. Free!
• 6 March 2pm: Stockhausen’s Helicopter String Quartet. Or, at least, a film of it, rather than the actual thing. Free.
• 6 March 4pm: the NZTrio perform a variety of movements from various string trios. The highlight will probably be a new work by David Downes, if only for the fact that it won’t have its integrity compromised by the Greatest Hits concept. Why is this happening at 4pm? $45 (one class of seating).
• 6 March 7.30pm: The Borodin Quartet play string quartets by Borodin, Shostakovich and Tchaikovsky. Not an astonishingly exciting programme, but it has Shostakovich 8th and there will supposedly be $15 student rush tickets available.
• 7 March 12pm: organ recital by Douglas Mews. Free!
• 7 March 2pm: a (mostly) children’s concert of music inspired by Tolkein and Dahl with the Zephyr Wind Quintet. Tickets are $36, kids $18.
• 7 March 4pm: the NZSQ perform Schubert, Alban Berg, Ross Harris and Beethoven (with Jenny Wollerman). The Alban Berg String Quartet really turned me on to 20th century music. It’s an absolute masterpiece, and definitely worth hearing. The Ross Harris should be interesting as well, although the Schubert is rather dull. $45 (one class of seating).
• 7 March 7.30pm: Keith Lewis in recital accompanied by Michael Houstoun. This is a total waste of Houstoun and of the festival’s money – a professional accompanist would do an equally good job. On the programme are Purcell, Britten, Barber and the inestimable Jenny McLeod. Probably the best programme on offer at the festival. $58 B reserve, $68 A reserve.
• 12 March 8pm: Ravi Shankar is 90 years old. This is the probably the last chance to see him play (I hope so, he certainly deserves a rest at that age) – and he certainly is a great musician – but there is quite a possibility that – as with Pavarotti’s tour a couple of years ago, he’s simply past it. Tickets range from $73 to $120.
• 17 March 7.30pm: The Freiburg Baroque orchestra performs Haydn and Mozart. Although the festival claims they are interpreters of “Classical Romantic and even contemporary music”, their two programmes belie this. It would be a fair bet that these two concerts will sound exactly the same, but if you must go to one, make it this first one, featuring the fourth Mozart Horn Concerto. $46-$98. You’ll need to spend $88 to be in a half-reasonable position.
• 18 March 7.30pm: The FBO snore their way through their second concert of Haydn and Mozart. $46-$98

Conducted by Kenneth Young, Clarinet: Andrzej Nowicki

One always has to prepare to be a little disappointed by student orchestral compositions, because of the time restrictions placed upon them. This was certainly true of Simon Dickson’s piece in the preceding NZSM orchestra concert, but the same could not be said for Ben Woods’ work. True, it could have gone on forever, but at any point Constant Sphere could have ended and still felt perfect. The work moves with immense, noble slowness; every point both static and inexorably pulling on to the next. Woods’ concept of “a shiny ball… rotating in changing light” is an exquisite one; one cannot help but think of the example of our own earth – always spinning, yet always changing. In Constant Sphere as on Earth, it is the little details that make the whole special; I particularly enjoyed the part with the trumpet , just audible inside the texture, playing a constant pitch with subtly changing rhythm, twisting time around it.

Little need be said about Johann Strauss – indeed, the less said the better. The first item from Die Fledermaus was sung competently by all concerned, although there were points toward the end of the opening solo when the orchestra was a little overwhelming. “Cinque… dieci” is a much more proficient piece (even if it lacks the Strauss’ gratuitous final high note – which is completely inappropriate at the beginning of an opera); Olga Gryniewicz sang with great confidence and considerable success.

Usually one sees Andrzej Nowicki playing some esoteric creation of one of the composition students; here he displayed his mastery of classical tradition. Weber is a hugely underplayed composer, at least in comparison to Beethoven, and the Clarinet Concerto No. 2 is a very fine work. The first two movements shun outwardly virtuosic technique and the glorious yet irrelevant tuttis of later Romantic works. Instead the clarinet plays a glorious, almost unceasing melodic line that undergoes some vivid transformations. The third movement has more technical passages, but the performer is still subservient to the music; this might be risky for a performer out to get all the applause they could muster, but of course the mark of an amazing musician is their ability to ability to produce amazing music. Andrzej Nowicki is certainly an amazing musician.

Night on Bare Mountain is probably the best known tone poem by any composer apart from the first bars of Also Sprach Zarathustra. The NZSM orchestra played enthusiastically and with great clarity; playing the  opening sections in particular every bit as viciously as Mussorgsky can have intended. The two choruses from Die Fledermaus were another example of facile music sung spectacularly well, with Ken Young judging the tempi perfectly. The 1919 version of the Firebird Suite is played less often than the subsequent revision; it is short enough to tack nicely on to the end of a concert like this. Although the playing itself was nicely polished, the balance of the piece did not seem to be quite right, with the strings all but disappearing. In the first movement in particular there seemed to be something of a hole in the sound, dominated by brass and percussion.

I’m actually quite flabbergasted by the dullness of the NZSO’s subscription programme for next year. There is very little New Zealand music on display – and less that I really want to hear. Of course, if you’re the kind of person looking out exclusively for repertoire symphonies, then you’re in luck,, but there’s precious little contemporary music on display, and it’s hardly flatteringly programmed. Many of the ‘stars’ who would previously have played/conducted two concerts are next year only doing one.

1. Smetana: Sharka; Sibelius: Violin Concerto; Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 6 “Pathetique”.

Why would anybody bother to show up? Really? The NZSO plays the -brilliant- Sibelius concerto nearly every year; the Tchaikovsky is stupefyingly dull. The purpose of this concert is to show off the ‘glamourous’ Hillary Hahn, who will doubtless get some kind of turgid writeup beforehand in the Dominion Post. Tellingly, the programme doesn’t even mention the Ma Vlast excerpt, the only creative moment in this programme – and in terms of programming Smetana, ‘creative’ means ‘not Die Moldau’. Inkinen conducts.

2. Strauss: Metamorphosen; Bruckner: Symphony No. 7.

Alright, I’ll admit it. I would dearly love to go and see the Strauss, but there’s a problem. There is no doubt whatsoever in my mind that Bruckner is far and away the worst symphonic composer to be spat into this world, and Symphony No. 7 just loses out to No. 4 in being the most terrifyingly bad symphony ever written. Inkinen conducts.

3. Ritchie: French Overture; Gounod: “Ah, Je ris de me voir”; Bellini: “Costa Diva”; Puccini: “Un bel di vedremo”, “Vissi d’arte”, “O mio babbino caro”; Elgar: Symphony No. 1.

Yes. That’s right. An Elgar symphony alongside a bunch of populist ‘high’ opera. I’m sure that Malvina Major will sing perfectly finely, even with such familiar material to work with, but I’m just not sure what exactly there is that’s really worth hearing. Tecwyn Evans conducts.

4. Mozart: Symphony No. 41; Strauss: Overture from Die Fledermaus; Lehar: “Meine Lippen, sie kuessen so heiss”, “Liebe, du Himmel auf Erden”, “Vilja”; Dvorak: Czech Suite Finale; Rusalka: Song to the Moon; Strauss: Thunder and Lightning Polka.

While the first of these Malvina Major concerts is designed to show her off as a dramatic soprano, this takes the other tack, delving through the murky legacy of singspiel to produce a concert that Hitler would really have loved. There is precious little music in this concert of any originality, although I would be somewhat curious to hear the Rusalka in any other context. Tecwyn Evans conducts.

5. Glinka: Overture from Ruslan and Ludmilla; Rachmaninov: Piano Concerto No. 3; Glazunov: The Seasons.

The first subscription concert I’d seriously consider paying to hear features an all-Russian line-up thankfully missing Tchaikovsky. Well, not really, because Glazunov was Tchaikovsky in a frock, but the Rachmaninov, played by Freddy Kempf, might just make up for it. Oh, and Alexander Lazarev, who last time I saw him was nigh on falling off the podium in excitement.

6. Dvorak: The Noon Witch; Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1; Prokofiev Symphony No. 7.

Ahhhh… Prokofiev, and some unfamiliar Dvorak. This will be a good concert, despite the Tchaikovsky, and would be pretty much perfect for Lazarev with some Shostakovich in there also. Alas,, ’tis not to be.