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 [...]

John Button’s review of last Friday’s NZSO concert with Dame Malvina Major is certainly the most negative review I’ve seen him write in quite some time (although his review of the following concert is somewhat nicer). Although I didn’t attend the concert, I’m not surprised at all – all the issues that Button raises with [...]

Actually, that’s a bit harsh. After all, Nelson ostensibly has an orchestra (or did that finish up with that thieving conductor?), and yet I was still astonished early last month to discover that Winnipeg not only has an orchestra, but that orchestra is running a new music festival (which started on the 6th of this [...]

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 [...]

Well, my hopes/predictions really could not have been further off the mark. The elephant in the room is the absence of any opera (unless you count Simon O’Neill’s Wagner recital). There is a reasonable amount of chamber music on hand – almost all on the weekend of the 6th-7th of March’, but nothing really outside [...]