Simon is an operaphile based in Auckland, New Zealand. He wrote his
dissertation on Japanese popular music. With a background in piano and
classical music retail, he spends his time attending as much
opera or vocal concert as he can and blogs at
irishenceaway.blogspot.com.
In this part-concert and part-lecture, Michael Vinten chronicles the history or New Zealand art song through the lives of the composers and poets featured, stories alternately hilarious and tragic.
Hahn balanced tranquility and ferocity in Prokofiev's First Violin Concerto, and conductor Gemma New drew out an especially nuanced reading of Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony.
The slow movement is gorgeous in an unashamedly romantic fashion and Morrison, some moments of uncertain intonation aside, gave a poetic rendition, at times fining his sound down to the most exquisite filigree of sound.
A combination of Western orchestral tradition and traditional Māori culture proves a fascinating and a worthwhile contribution to New Zealand’s orchestral repertoire.
The vocal part requires a range covering over five octaves, from the lowest bass notes to a high falsetto and Robert Tucker coped amazingly with the score’s lyrical elements and the various shrieking, whispering and clucking noises he was called upon to create.
De Waart once again showed a formidable grasp of the musical structure so that the occasional outbursts of violence made thematic sense and a strong feeling of tension led up to the final cry of despair.
Edo de Waart and the NZSO thrill with the old warhorse that is Schubert's ninth as much as in an insightful and exciting rendition of Salonen's Violin Concerto.
Astonishingly vivid performances from an ensemble cast made it one of the most outstanding of their recent productions, an auspicious sign as de Mallet Burgess takes over the General Directorship of the company.
A case of musical minds being in particularly close interpretative sync, revealing the music not through showy display but through restrained but intense concentration.
In the exquisite singing line of the second movement, the appeal was not just in her beauty of tone but in the concentrated feeling Mullova brought to the shaping of each phrase.
The Queen of the Night appeared as a malevolent giant spider, complete with exoskeleton, threatening Tamino with her stabbing limbs and summoning hordes of smaller spiders to writhe over Pamina when the latter hesitated to commit to Sarastro's murder.
Bellincampi’s way with this symphony was impressive: he knitted the composer’s sometimes diffuse structural cells into something cohesive, with no loss of tension in the various silences and odd transitional moments.
