| Date and venue | Title |
|---|---|
| 16-Jun-2013 Raye Freedman Arts Centre | Auckland Chamber Orchestra shine in Stravinsky and Dean |
 The day before Stravinsky’s 131st birthday, the Auckland Chamber Orchestra and conductor Peter Scholes presented a programme built around the Russian composer’s Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments and featuring works by Lyell Cresswell, George Antheil and Brett Dean. Lyell Cresswell is a New Zealand composer currently living in Scotland. His 2004 piece Con Fuoco is a riotously animated work for small ensemble which the programme suggests is influenced by scenes of fire from the Maori Legend of Maui and Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound.Read full review... | |
| 4-May-2013 Auckland Town Hall | A magical gala evening with Bryn Terfel in Auckland |
 The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra really has the perfect Wagner sound. Their full, vibrant string tone and magnificent pealing brass were fully in evidence in a thrilling rendition of the concert version of the overture from Tannhäuser. Few moments in music are as exciting as the build-up to the Big Tune in this piece, and the orchestra’s performance here was barnstorming yet perfectly accurate.Read full review... | |
| 2-May-2013 Auckland Town Hall | Auckland Philharmonia's Last Songs a mixed bag |
 The Auckland Philharmonia and conductor Jun Märkl presented “Last Songs”, a programme of late works by Schubert, Richard Strauss and Zemlinsky. We opened with Zemlinsky’s Sinfonietta, a work much admired by Schoenberg and Berg. There is a spiky quality to the music that is reminiscent of Hindemith and Stravinsky, though notably less acerbic than either. One can perceive the influences of both Neoclassicism and jazz and the romantic lushness that is a characteristic of Zemlinsky’s earlier work emerges only briefly here.Read full review... | |
| 18-Apr-2013 Aotea Centre: ASB Auditorium | A visually stunning Madama Butterfly from New Zealand Opera |
 Sometimes in a performance there is a moment when everything just comes together; when every element on stage is operating at such a high level that the performance transcends these elements and causes one to become so immersed in the proceedings that you forget you’re at a performance at all. The audience at New Zealand Opera’s Madama Butterfly’s opening night experienced one such moment in the final parts of the love duet concluding Act I.Read full review... | |
| 17-Mar-2013 Auckland Town Hall | A splendid brew: Coffee with Mr Bach at the Auckland Arts Festival |
 Rare is the chance for Aucklanders to hear period instruments at all, let alone Bach’s masterpieces played on them. Age of Discovery has been active since 2006, dedicated to performing pre-19th-century music on instruments of the period. Leaving aside the thorny questions of authenticity and composer’s intent, there is something so breezy and vibrant about the sound of Age of Discovery’s instruments that it was a joy to behold.Read full review... | |
| 9-Mar-2013 The Civic | Kronos Quartet and Wu Man stun with Tan Dun |
 The Kronos Quartet is well known for their ability to push the boundaries of what a string quartet can accomplish. In this year’s Auckland Arts Festival they and their regular collaborator, Chinese pipa virtuoso Wu Man, have brought along a programme consisting of Tan Dun’s Ghost Opera and the performance piece A Chinese Home, put together by the performers themselves. My only previous exposure to Tan Dun’s music has been the concertos based on his film scores Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Hero and The Banquet.Read full review... | |
| 8-Mar-2013 Auckland Town Hall | Tribute to Carmen Rupe with the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra |
 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. This is combined with settings of “unfeminine” texts by women poets translated into Spanish and Maori.Read full review... | |
| 15-Dec-2012 Holy Trinity Cathedral | Festive fare from the Auckland Philharmonia |
 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. The orchestra treated us to a potpourri of seasonal pieces, most well-known but some unfamiliar.Read full review... | |
| 25-Nov-2012 Wellington Town Hall: Ilott Theatre | A marvellous and disturbing Pierrot Lunaire from Stroma New Music Ensemble |
 The year 2012 marks the 100th birthday of Arnold Schoenberg’s seminal Dreimal sieben Gedichte aus Albert Girauds “Pierrot lunaire”, more commonly known as Pierrot lunaire. To celebrate this, Stroma New Music Ensemble engaged one of New Zealand’s foremost young singers for Pierrot, and prefaced it with two works by Schoenberg’s pupils.Read full review... | |
| 22-Nov-2012 Auckland Town Hall | Magnificent Messiaen and Mahler from the Auckland Philharmonia |
 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. Despite being in five movements, Mahler also designated the work as being in three parts; the first and second movements making up Part One, the long third movement making up Part Two and the fourth and fifth movements making up Part Three.Read full review... | |
| 18-Nov-2012 Auckland Town Hall | A solid Solomon by Viva Voce at Auckland Town Hall |
 Auckland choir Viva Voce’s final offering for the year was a semi-staged performance of Handel’s late oratorio Solomon. An attempt to stage Solomon must deal with two important issues: firstly, not a lot dramatic happens to actually stage, and secondly, the three acts bear little dramatic relation to each other. Viva Voce’s semi-staging is probably as far as it could feasibly be staged, basically resembling a concert performance with a few stage props. These consisted of a throne for Solomon, a divan for his queen and a prop baby for the harlots to fight over.Read full review... | |
| 11-Nov-2012 Mercury Theatre | Auckland Opera Studio's Così fan tutte makes for an ebullient and moving evening |
| Auckland Opera Studio’s offering this year was an ebullient rendition of Mozart’s immortal comedy Così fan tutte. The recitatives were mostly replaced by English dialogue, though the accompanied recitatives were maintained. No composer makes more of recitative than Mozart so it was a shame to lose them, but the cast delivered the dialogue clearly and it contributed to a fast-paced, thrilling show. More than most operas, Così fan tutte really does benefit from a young, good-looking cast who all just happen to be very promising singers. Read full review... | |
| 18-Oct-2012 Auckland Town Hall | Revelatory B minor Mass from the Auckland Philharmonia and Stephen Layton |
 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.Read full review... | |
| 15-Oct-2012 Auckland Town Hall | Michael Houstoun impresses in Beethoven's Diabelli Variations |
 This concert was prefaced by a short film of Michael Houstoun speaking about Beethoven and his experiences with the composer’s music. He movingly recounted his first encounter with Beethoven, the Appassionata Sonata recorded by Arthur Rubinstein, and how it first inspired a lifelong love and affinity. It was this love and affinity that was clearly on show during the following scintillating performance of the Diabelli Variations, the piece he had chosen to perform as a way of celebrating his 60th birthday.
Read full review... | |
| 25-Sep-2012 Aotea Centre: ASB Auditorium | New Zealand Opera's Bartered Bride: A Czech classic in English |
 The Bartered Bride, premiered in 1866, is considered to be Smetana’s masterpiece in the operatic genre and is widely regarded as the national opera of the Czech Republic. Despite this, for their second and last production this year, New Zealand Opera elected to perform the opera in English translation rather than the original Czech, aiming to speak to their audiences in a more direct fashion.Read full review... | |
