Concerts

The fact that Pekka Kuusisto made the call to switch the order of the programme should not have been a surprise although it was as well he did. Kuusisto champions music written and performed by women and where possible his programmes are 50-50. Louise Farrenc, a successful symphonic composer and professor in the 19^th century despite gender-biased society and establishment, fell into obscurity in the 20^th century. Ironically, Antonio Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons was also forgotten soon after it was written but has been immensely popular since it was rediscovered in the mid-20^th century.

From the first movement, Farrenc’s Symphony No. 3 has a very pleasing sound to it: a Classical feel with Romantic style. Melodies are shared across the orchestra and interesting rhythmic patterns run through the work. The Scherzo was a particularly good combination of speed and delicacy and effective changes of tone. There was a sense of a confident ‘whole’ of the orchestra and conductor.

Without the programme switch, Farrenc would have been overwhelmed by the weight of the audience’s anticipation and Kuusisto’s innovative, idiosyncratic interpretation of The Four Seasons.

Each season has three movements and by the end of Spring everyone knew this was going to be a unique year. Kuusisto took every opportunity to accentuate familiar features of the music and make them dramatic, whether by volume, balance, speed, technique, tone, or imitation. Towards the end of Spring we even heard bagpipes from the violins. (Proof bagpipes are unmistakable but violins – and anything except bagpipes – are more flexible.)

The Summer Presto was furiously fast and energetic, a perfect showcase for Kuusisto’s virtuoso violin playing. The later seasons were closer to the traditional sound, with refreshing presentation. The Autumn Adagio, just cello and harpsichord, was that beautiful simplicity that leaves you barely breathing. Winter had a realistic harshness, grey and gravelly, pizzicato like ice drops melting – and stunning violin from Kuusisto.

Rossini Stabat Mater: A mother’s love put side by side two interpretations of the 13^th-century Christian hymn that portrays Mary’s suffering during the crucifixion of her son. Each was quite different from the other and both were unlike traditional settings. Victoria Kelly’s Stabat Mater was commissioned by the NZSO as a response to Gioacchino Rossini’s Stabat Mater. Rossini’s piece strongly reflects his career composing operas in the bel canto style of virtuoso singing and elaborate vocal ornamentation.

Although the melodic and dramatic influence was there, it did not overwhelm the seriousness of the text which came through in the performance. Valentina Peleggi’s direction brought out the mood of each verse and the vocalists responded with feeling, especially when their solo voices were on display. Voices New Zealand Chamber Choir were excellent as ever. Led by music director Karen Grylls, their perfect diction, timing, phrasing, and dynamics are extraordinary and the best you will hear in Aotearoa.

The world premiere of Kelly’s Stabat Mater was an experience that lasted in my mind and body long after the performance. The music was profoundly emotional and somehow deeply, urgently visceral and beautiful all at once. In this Stabat Mater, Kelly’s reimagined Mary does not accept her son’s sacrifice, she does not weep nor mourn, but wields a sword and saves him. Kelly’s response to the eternal narrative of the suffering of women and mothers is a primal sense of rage and sadness expressed in an almost gentle, but powerfully nuanced and subtle simplicity.

Kelly wrote her own text and thanks to the vocal skill of Voices New Zealand, her perspective was plain to hear, as was the musical representation of Mary: a white crystal singing bowl, sometimes to the fore, other times absent.

Fittingly, the commission was funded by a consortium of female patrons, and honours for the evening went to a trio of women – composer, conductor, and choir director.

Nearly 300 performers take the stage for this epic collaboration between Orpheus Choir Wellington, Auckland Choral, a children’s chorus, the Wellington Brass Band, and outstanding soloists.

The concert opens with Leonard Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms, a lovely piece, full of unexpected turns and lyrical beauty that showcases Bernstein’s flair for blending classical structure with theatrical expressiveness. Bernstein composed Chichester Psalms in 1965, drawing on material originally written for West Side Story and an abandoned musical project titled The Skin of Our Teeth. In his solo passages, countertenor Coco Diaz masterfully draws out the jazzy, rhythmic vitality and melodic phrasing of the work. His performance is mesmerising, and his voice is smooth, pure, and richly coloured. However, the choir seems less confident, with moments of hesitancy and very little dynamic contrast.

No such hesitancy is to be found, however, once we are plunged into the epic tale of fate, revelry, and sensuality that is Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana. The full force of the Wellington Brass Band is on show from the first bars of the opening, and the choirs seem to swell and fill with colour to meet them. It is simply thrilling music.

What follows is a smorgasbord of moods and modes. Baritone James Harrison brings delightful comic flair to his performance, particularly in his drunken characterisation during In Taberna. His theatricality is matched by vocal precision, making his moments both funny and musically satisfying. Soprano Emma Pearson is faultless throughout; consistent, clear, and commanding. The Wellington Brass Band are wondrous, adding punch and texture to the already rich orchestration. Pianists Jian Liu and Diedre Irons, both elite soloists, anchor the performance with virtuosic clarity and stamina, their playing a masterclass in precision and expression. It feels like an extraordinarily rare treat to have two such exceptional pianists on stage at once. The heft and drama of the closing movement is hard to beat; monumental, visceral, and utterly absorbing.

Mahler’s Sixth Symphony is a behemoth. It demands technical precision, psychological insight, and masterful expressiveness. Tonight, under the baton of Gemma New, the NZSO delivers a performance that lives up to those demands.

The stage is packed with over 100 musicians, including two harps and the infamous Mahler hammer, an enormous wooden box and hammer which looms behind the stage on the choir stalls. Mahler wanted the hammer in this work to produce a dull, hollow thud, which he intended to evoke two blows of fate striking down a hero. It’s not a standard instrument, so the NZSO built their own especially for this concert series.

The opening movement veers between martial rhythms and romantic lyricism. New favours clarity over indulgence, allowing the orchestra to breathe without losing momentum. Occasionally there is a gentle clang of cowbells, rustic and tonally indifferent to the fanfare around it.  

In the Andante, warm strings shimmer as the music unfolds almost organically. It is a welcome reprieve from the symphony’s otherwise relentless forward motion. In the Scherzo, Mahler’s sardonic humour comes to the fore. The woodwinds are sharp and brittle, their interjections biting.

The final movement is sprawling, fragmented, and devastating. The hammer blows land with theatrical precision, each one a brutal punctuation. Offstage, the cow bells echo again, as if pastoral realities are making one last attempt to break through the brass surges and the foreboding tones of the trombones and tuba. New navigates the movement’s emotional terrain with assurance, drawing out moments of despair, defiance, and fleeting hope.

The NZSO plays with conviction and sensitivity, horns melding with woodwinds and strings to create rich harmonic textures. The percussionists (two timpanists, snare drum, celeste, xylophone, glockenspiel, church bells, cowbells, and the hammer) are especially deserving of praise. Tasked with some of the symphony’s most dramatic moments, they are impeccable. Gemma New proves herself a formidable Mahler interpreter, drawing up the intellect and heart of his music.

While Tāwhirimātea (Māori god of wind and weather) and Te Ihorangi (Māori god of rain) reminded us we are still looking forward to spring in Wellington, the NZSO lifted our spirits to remind us the blast of winter will give way to the new season soon in Ascension, the second concert of their Rumakina Immerse Festival.

Vesa-Matti Leppänen, playing the now, sadly, late Michael Hill’s own violin, took to the skies as The Lark Ascending, an early 20^th-century English classic. The violin has a beautiful tone, bringing light and shade to the birdsong even when the lark was at his highest. We have skylarks in New Zealand too and Ralph Vaughan Williams’ evocation of English skies and rolling hills translates into our landscape and light.

Papatūānuku is the outcome of a remarkable collaboration between taonga pūoro expert Jerome Kavanagh Poutama and composer Salina Fisher. In his pre-concert talk, Poutama spoke of how his music is all held in his head, each piece bound to a memory of the time, place, and event of its creation. Fisher’s orchestration was written to wrap around and support Poutama’s melodies and there were some beautiful matches between traditional orchestral instruments and the many taonga pūoro (singing treasures) Poutama used to give voice to Papatūānuku, the Earth Mother. A wonderful instrumental rendition of the dawn chorus instantly reminded me of hearing that amazing natural phenomenon on Kapiti Island, a conservation reserve rich in birdlife. The fluttering, twittering, flurrying, and calling on stage was as close to the real thing as you could get.

In contrast, Robert Schumann’s Symphony No. 1 Spring is firmly of the classic Romantic era. Traditional in form and more familiar to the ear than Papatūānuku, the sound was perfectly balanced and expertly played. Conductor André De Ridder’s direction was joyful, directive but nuanced and engaging. We will all look forward to seeing more of him when he takes up the role of NZSO’s musical director from 2027. Haere mai, Maestro!

Wellington’s weather lined itself up perfectly for the opening concert of the NZSO’s 2025 Rumakina Immerse Festival, although the title of Modest Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain could be an understatement for the state of the streets on a cold, wet, windy night in August. The violins, brass, and percussion set up the witches’ sabbath gathering, shrieking and howling most convincingly before eventually resolving into an uneasy peace, led by clarinet and then the flutes. Later, when we left the Michael Fowler Centre the wind and rain had eased off, perhaps just in time for the Cuba Street partygoers heading out to meet the witches turning for home.

Domestic magic was very much the theme for the next item, Paul Dukas’ The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. The opening theme sounded like there were cobwebs in the corners and the apprentice was taking an extended break. The pace picks up as the boy gets to work and when the bassoon and glockenspiel play off each other, you know the magic has been instilled into the broom. Made famous by Disney’s Fantasia, the music is terrifically visual for anyone who knows the film. For anyone without the mental images, the orchestra did a fine job of portraying the mayhem and panic as the broom gets out of control.

A more powerful magician is at work in Igor Stravinsky’s Petrushka, bringing puppets to life. The innovation in Stravinsky’s composition is evident from the start. Early sounds of dissonance are later fully realised as the composer uses two unrelated keys to show the dual natures of a puppet who has been made to live. The flutes and trumpets combined well to lead us into the seduction of the Ballerina. The orchestra responded to the direction of conductor André de Ridder (announced as the new NZSO music director from 2027) with nicely balanced accents and intensity conveying action, colour, and all the drama of Petrushka’s life and death.

This is my first encounter with the Prefab Hall venue, and I am impressed. The glass and cathedral-grain plywood interior is an ideal backdrop for this intimate chamber music performance. There is minimal but effective stage dressing consisting of suitcases, sheet music, and candles. In the front row, we are within touching distance of the cellists.

The production includes many thoughtful touches. The programme notes for each piece are written by a different musician, and include their personal musings and emotional responses to the works. Before each musical work, NZSQ violinist Peter Clark reads a poem by a well-known author from Aotearoa. Each poem is cleverly chosen to resonate with the themes of the music. It’s an effective convention; the poems feel almost like palate cleansers between courses of rich food.

We begin stirringly, with the newly formed Antipodes Quartet in their Wellington debut, playing Dmitri Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 7 in F-sharp minor. Right from violinist Mana Waiariki’s adroit opening the quartet are precisely attuned to each other. This is an emotionally and structurally complex work, which I last saw performed by the internationally renowned Borodin Quartet, yet I was astounded and moved by this rendition.  

Antipodes Quartet follow the Shostakovich with Gao Ping’s A Lingering Echo – homage to Dmitri Shostakovich. We then have a reshuffling of musicians. Antipodes Quartet cellist Lavinnia Rae is joined by two New Zealand String Quartet members and guest violinist Arna Morton for Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 6 in G major. It’s a tremendous pleasure to see these different combinations of artists working together, especially at such close quarters when the minutiae of their techniques can be appreciated.

All eight musicians return to the stage for the decadent and diabolical final work, Shostakovich’s Two Pieces for String Octet. The octet produces a gloriously balanced sound – each young musician synergistic with their counterpart. Luminary cellist Inbal Megiddo is especially magnificent, drawing overwhelmingly beautiful phrases from her instrument.

Party Faithful is a remarkable concert programme, presenting two symphonies – both Aotearoa premieres – by 20^th-century masters. Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 3 in E-flat Major, Op. 20 The First of May, and Benjamin Britten’s Symphony for Cello and Orchestra, Op. 68 both emerged from complex times in the artists’ careers, when each composer was publicly celebrated yet privately vulnerable. The two men were near exact contemporaries: while Shostakovich navigated his perilous acclaim under the shadow of Stalin’s purges, Britten lived a precarious double life in England – a semi-closeted gay man, who nevertheless enjoyed the official patronage and personal friendship of the British Royal Family.

We open with Britten’s Symphony for Cello and Orchestra, an intellectually demanding work composed for the legendary Russian cellist Mstislav Rostropovich. Soloist Lev Sivkov joins the orchestra, and from the outset commands the stage. The piece unfolds as a series of musical affirmations and challenges that threaten to destabilise the work, before once again allowing the soloist enough momentum to counterbalance the orchestra. Sivkov’s characteristically intense style extracts each phrase with precision, switching deftly between tones in an assortment of grainy, breathy, and rumbling theme-fragments. He fires volleys only to cut them off abruptly, or detonates hard-struck chords only to demur and dapple us with a warm, golden cadenza. The audience is engrossed, and even Sivkov’s fellow musicians seated around him seem transfixed by his playing.

By the time Shostakovich composed the symphony featured in tonight’s programme, his friend and fellow composer Mikhail Kvadri – who had received the dedication of his extraordinary First Symphony – had already been executed. Fittingly then, the Shostakovich we hear in this Third Symphony brims with political contempt and anxiety. The work uses a single-movement structure, with marches, brass flourishes, and lyrical passages tripping over each other in their desperation to proclaim the praises of the Soviet State, without a single theme repeated. The conclusion is a driven and disquieting fanfare, culminating in a compelling choral section from the Orpheus Choir.

There are so few opportunities to enjoy collaborations like this one that the audience dived wholeheartedly into the enormously uplifting experience Mana Moana offered us. The very full programme was a repertoire of songs from around the Pacific Islands arranged for Signature Choir and the NZSO. “Pasifika music is grounded in storytelling, vocal interplay, and spiritual expression while orchestral music brings scale, structure, and emotional range,” Signature Choir founder and music director Fepulea’i Helen Tupai says.

The Signature Choir embraces more than 50 vocalists, and was formed three years ago in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington to promote Pacific language and culture through music. The local audience loves their local choir and plenty of waves, smiles, greetings, and eye contact between singers and family in the crowd added to the palpable excitement in the sold-out auditorium.

We voyaged between the Cook Islands, Fiji, Niue, Samoa, Tokelau, and Tonga, guided by exceptional talent: Helen Tupai and Jadrah Tupai, director and co-director of the Signature Choir; Brent Stewart conducting the NZSO; and MC Tofiga Fepulea’i. With one of Aotearoa’s leading comedians at the helm, the evening was filled with laughter as well as the simple but powerful happiness inspired by the music.

And the music was awesome. The choir was superbly supported by the orchestra. Voices might sometimes be overwhelmed by instruments but not in this performance. The sounds of the Pacific were front and centre and the orchestra proved how musical traditions can step out of their familiar spaces. Western culture claimed the term ‘classical’ for its music and musicians, but the NZSO showed us how they can flex those boundaries. Expert arrangements and wonderful performances demonstrated how cultures can combine in musical and metaphorical harmony. Whoops, cheers, dancing, clapping, singing, laughter, and delight were the other prominent sounds of the evening, all of them rapidly growing in the last quarter of the show. Pure joy.

John Ritchie’s Papanui Road Concert Overture was a brilliant opening piece in this programme. The road came to life in a series of distinct soundbites. It really was like walking down the street, checking the front gardens, peering up driveways, spotting locals, remembering events, and noticing what was going on.

Pianist Javier Perianes played Manuel de Falla’s Nights in the Gardens of Spain with a sound neither dominant nor lost in the orchestra. Just as the composer intended, all the musicians came together in a lovely unity of Andalusian, flamenco, North African, and classical traditions.

Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G Major is also an intermingling of styles, this time the composer’s Basque heritage and 1920s jazz. The opening whip crack tells you this is something different. The first and third movements have a tinge of jazz to go with the folk melodies. From the first piano notes – which were beautifully played – the balance and tone in the piano and orchestra were so seamless that in the second movement, it was as if the woodwind emerged from inside the piano, one after the other. Emilia Hoving’s conducting talent and style were really apparent here.

While playing in different time signatures in each hand is definitely challenging for the pianist, imagine the next level of difficulty this presents for the conductor. Hoving is a very talented, assured, and confident young director. Her distinctive style has been noted by commentators in the last couple of years. Here she appeared to be conducting a different time in each hand, each comfortably independent of the other.

Leading the orchestra into Stravinsky’s The Firebird, Hoving played with the opportunities the 13 movements presented to bring out some amazing solos from horns, strings, woodwind, and harp. The intensity and liveliness grew, building towards a thrilling finale. Waves of pulsing sound raised the heart rate, excitement, and the applause.

After the opening piece, Don Juan by Richard Strauss, conductor Adam Johnson told us it wouldn’t be the last time the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra (NZSO) National Youth Orchestra (NYO) string musicians would play it. Don Juan is apparently one of the more difficult pieces in the repertoire and, should they pursue their careers with other orchestras, they will probably find themselves playing it in their audition. On the strength of this performance, their careers, and those of their colleagues, are off to a great start. The sound was lush and deep with strong rushes of romanticism through lovely legato playing.

Soprano Madison Horman, a local from Palmerston North with an impressive musical education, took on the challenge of Strauss’ 4 Lieder, Op. 27. Horman has a rich tone and although a little outweighed by the orchestra in early, quieter passages, her big voice did justice to one of the most frequently performed of Strauss’ works.

As well as an opportunity for the country’s best young musicians to play and perform together, the NYO also supports an annual composer-in-residence. This year, Luka Venter drew inspiration from UNESCO’s International Year of Glaciers’ Preservation to take listeners inside a glacier. Glaciers are in a constant state of change and Venter captured the sounds of that perpetual movement with a mysterious accuracy. As well as depicting the vivid blue colour of the ice, we could hear the light dancing through the form of the glacier.

Rachmaninov’s Symphony No. 2 brought together all the hard work our National Youth Orchestra musicians have put in on their own, in their regional groups, and finally, as one orchestra rehearsing together for the last week. The passion of the piece was matched by passion in the performance. It feels harsh to pick only one amongst so many, but the standout was the principal clarinet in the Adagio. Long passages, played with infinite care and attention, held the narrative perfectly.

This concert continues Orchestra Wellington’s season-long exploration of the works of Dmitri Shostakovich, spoiling us with the Aotearoa premiere performance of his Symphony No. 2 in B major, Op. 14 October. This challenging work epitomises a precious and precarious time in the composer’s career, when he was still the beneficiary of state support. October was commissioned by the Propaganda department of the State Music Publishing house to mark the 10^th anniversary of the October Revolution.

The orchestra opens with low muttering strings, a chaotic ferment of pregnant tension. Music director Marc Taddei’s command of the symphony’s moods and mutations is masterful, and the audience clings on through tempestuous, whirling themes and an almost sarcastic march. Brass shines throughout, glutting on variations of liminal and mocking tonalities. This crucible of sound is collapsed instantly by the wail of a factory siren, a simultaneously otherworldly and industrial interruption that summons the choir (Orpheus Choir Wellington) for the rousing and bizarrely banal finale.

In the interlude that follows, our conductor confesses into the microphone, “Bonkers is the word for this music”.

This is a night of delights for the Russophiles, with Shostakovich set alongside his fellow countrymen, 19^th-century greats Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. It’s smart programming – opening with the melodic refusals and polyphony of October allows for the full shock value of the work to ring out, and makes the lyricism of the following pieces all the more pleasing.

Celebrated pianist Jian Liu joins the orchestra for Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in E-flat major, Op. 75 and delights us with his adept and sensitive playing. The evening closes with Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade, a tone poem whose endless harmonic invention and reinvention on the same seductive tunes conjures the plenty of the Arabian Nights. Concertmaster Amalia Hall winds balletically through the yearning violin melodies, complemented by dynamic section soloists, including a deliciously expressive oboe. We leave Favoured Son stimulated, satiated, and eager to see where this season’s narrative takes us next.