Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Auckland Philharmonia

Director Anapela Polata’ivao handles her mixed forces of amateurs and professionals with seamless assurance, the crowds’ movements across the stage showing both clarity and intent. 

New Zealand Opera's new production impresses with its stunning set design and art direction, and its restrained emotional tone. 

Director Simon Phillips takes the opportunity to reshape the setting of Rossini's comic opera to modern-day New Zealand. 

David Fray's mannered Bach is a let-down, but Karl-Heinz Steffens brings out the spacious majesty in Bruckner's Ninth Symphony. 

With all soloists demonstrating charming ornamentation, a wonderful sense of fun and ease pervades the APO's performance.

Gareth Farr re-orchestrates Gluck in Neil Ieremia's imaginative reinterpretation of the Orpheus myth for New Zealand Opera. 

Lindy Hume directs a refreshingly uncomplicated new staging for New Zealand Opera, supported by fine musical performances.

Cavernous acoustics hamper individual lines in the latest concert in the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra's “Baroque and Beyond” series.

Much delayed by the pandemic, Giordano Bellincampi's Beethoven symphony cycle with the Auckland PO finally reaches its conclusion with a triumphant closing concert. 

New Zealand-born violinist Geneva Lewis soars in Samuel Barber's Violin Concerto, framed in Giordano Bellincampi's programme by Korngold and Dvořák.

An excitingly theatrical Verdi Requiem under Giordano Bellincampi, benefitting greatly from a mostly stunning line-up of solo singers.

An astonishing showcase, with Christian Li tackling both works with technical skill and swagger that belied his tender age. 

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. 

Lindy Hume directs a new production of Mozart's masterpiece which proves a constant delight.

Giordano Bellincampi presides over a fleet and crisp performance of Beethoven's only opera, performed in Auckland Town Hall. 

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.

The vocal items in this programme were the most successful, driven as they were by Bauer's searing interpretations.

Stephen Layton returns to Auckland to continue his series of Bach's choral masterpieces with the APO. 

It was hard not to be drawn in by the romance and tragedy as presented by such a sincere, credible and vocally talented young cast and a conductor with such strong identification with the idiom.

The Viennese clarinettist joined the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra and Carlos Miguel Prieto in a programme of Copland, Weber and Shostakovich.

Charming and hilarious by turn, this production fields a largely young and Kiwi cast.

Though occasionally entertaining, this production was ultimately unsatisfying as a stage presentation of Bernstein’s work. 

Puccini’s score has many thrilling moments, here taken up by a fascinating if uneven cast of singers.

This was a most impressive showing from the orchestra and conductor in which the works of three influential composers given emotionally engrossing treatment.

Notwithstanding Esfahani and McKeish’s sterling account of the Poulenc and the orchestra’s thrilling take on The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, this was not a consistent enough concert to be called a complete success.

...it was the Bach pieces that were the undoubted highlights, particularly the radiant contribution of Sara Macliver.

This Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra concert was titled simply "Degenerate" and designed to showcase works that were – or would have been – banned for their so-called "degeneracy" during the Third Reich, either for the perceived "radical" nature of the music or for the simple fact the composer was Jewish.

There was a consistent sense of fun in the solo part, matched by the ebullient conducting of Bellincampi.

Overall, Bellincampi made a strong argument for some neglected musical treasures and one looks forward to see how his collaboration with the Auckland Philharmonia develops.

From the very beginning, as Faust teased out the twisting opening theme, one could tell this was to be no ordinary Mendelssohn performance.

For the third concert of their 2015 Premier Series, the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra under Musical Director Eckehard Stier presented "Out of this World", a varied programme of Bach, Dutilleux and Shostakovich.

A Child Of Our Time brought this year's Auckland Arts Festival to a magnificent finish with its message as universal as it was when first composed. 

In Auckland, macbEth: the opera succeeds not only as a work of art, but also as a conduit for understanding of a frequently ignored and tragic conflict and an unforgettable reflection on the harsh realities of post-colonial Africa"

The wide variety of music Vienna has provided over the last couple of centuries was effectively on display here in Auckland.

Nikki Chooi makes something less than a fantasy out of Bruch but the Auckland Philharmonia shine in Schumann.

There are few concert-going pleasures as rewarding as hearing a great conductor performing music he is clearly passionate about and inspiring those around him to ever greater heights of involvement with the music. This is what the audience at the Auckland Town Hall was treated to with Paul McCreesh and his interpretation of Elgar's Symphony no. 2 in E flat major with the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra. 

Joanna MacGregor's 'Exotic Birds', in an imaginatively programmed Auckland Philharmonia concert, gets our reviewer all aflutter.

Stravinsky's Petrushka the highlight of a varied programme to open the Auckland Philharmonic's 2014 season. 

The overriding theme of the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra’s season finale concert appeared to be night, teaming Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht and Falla’s Nights in the Gardens of Spain with the raging force and violence of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring.

Of the two major orchestras performing in Auckland, the Auckland Philharmonia consistently has the more interesting programming (in recent reviews I’ve praised them in everything from Messiaen to Bach). It was interesting, then, to hear them in the bread-and-butter symphonic repertoire of Bruch and Brahms.

While this concert’s marketing was focused on Mozart’s Requiem, it was Haydn in the first half that made the greater impact, in the form of an ecstatically virtuosic performance of his Cello Concerto no. 1 with soloist Alban Gerhardt. Passagework was everywhere immaculately tuned and played with perfect dexterity, Gerhardt’s fingers dancing up and down the instrument with tremendous velocity.

Perhaps it was the prospect of a brand new composition or the idea of an evening of two full symphonies that put people off, but the Auckland Town Hall was very sparsely attended indeed for the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra’s ‘Voices of Youth’ concert, featuring works based on texts written from children’s perspectives.

Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra’s “Bach to the Future” promised to be a highlight of their season this year. This orchestra has repeatedly shown its mettle in 20th-century repertoire and had taken part in an absolutely stunning B minor Mass last year. And how appropriate to have a young Scotsman conducting Mendelssohn’s “Scottish” Symphony.

The subject of Songs and Dances of Desire, this new performance piece with music by Auckland Philharmonia composer-in-residence Jack Body, is Carmen Rupe, drag queen extraordinaire, champion of gay rights and one-time mayoral candidate, who died in 2011. She evidently saw herself in the operatic figure of Carmen, and Body’s work is sprinkled with appropriations from Bizet’s opera.

For this Christmas concert we were transported from the Auckland Philharmonia’s usual venue at the Auckland Town Hall to the Holy Trinity Cathedral in Parnell. It was interesting to compare the sound of the orchestra; the cathedral has a slight echo that seemed to boost the richness of the orchestra’s sound, at times (like at the climax of Bizet’s Farandole) becoming almost shockingly loud.

Auckland is a good place to be for Mahler lovers at the moment. Following hard on the heels of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra’s Seventh Symphony, the Auckland Philharmonia brought their interpretation of his Fifth to the same hall.

The Mass in B minor was completed in 1749, the year before Bach’s death. Much of the work consists of music Bach composed much earlier in his life (the Kyrie and Gloria from one of the Lutheran Masses). The sections he added latter were among the last things he wrote before he died.