4 May · 2025 · St Andrew’s on The Terrace · Anne French
The night of the concert was cold and wet. The big southerly storm that hit on Wednesday was still in force, so the small audience in St Andrew’s was disappointing but not surprising. This review is dedicated to everyone who let the…
16 Jun · 2024 · Wellington Town Hall · Anne French
If you’ve ever wanted to know what the Tudor Consort sounds like when it’s off the leash, this concert provided the answer. Repast comprised drinks and nibbles for the audience, and bite-sized chunks of mostly early music, some…
24 May · 2024 · Public Trust Hall · Anne French
This was a distinctly youthful concert. Not because it was packed with music students (although there were a few there amongst the grey heads, chins thoughtfully propped on knees, listening intently), but because most of the music was…
19 May · 2024 · Anne French
Saint-Saëns thought the St Cecilia Mass was Gounod’s best work. But I’d never heard it before, so I was interested to go along to Cantoris’s first concert for 2024 to hear it. As for the ‘Bach Magnificat’, I was excited to find it wasn’t…
28 Apr · 2024 · St Andrew’s on The Terrace · Anne French
Nota Bene Twentieth Anniversary Gala Concert St Andrews on the Terrace, 27 April 2024 What’s the difference between an orchestra and a choir? No, not a trick question. The difference is that choirs usually love their music directors. At…
30 Jun · 2023 · Michael Fowler Centre · Anne French
Friday 30th June 2023 This year’s NYO conductor started playing in the local youth orchestra in Costa Rica, where he grew up, before studying percussion and conducting at a university in Texas. He was an inspired choice for the NYO, given…
7 May · 2023 · St Andrew’s on The Terrace · Anne French
Sunday 7 May, 3 pm This was the first concert of Wellington Chamber Music’s 2023 season, and it promises a great season to come. Les Voisins were scheduled to play this concert two years ago, but the performance was interrupted by a…
28 Apr · 2023 · Michael Fowler Centre · Anne French
Friday 28 April 2023 This was always going to be a big concert, with Shostakovich 10 programmed alongside Bloch’s remarkable work Schelomo . It was also contrabassoonist David Angus’s last concert with the NZSO, after 42 years with the…
15 Apr · 2023 · Michael Fowler Centre · Anne French
Saturday 15th April, 2023 The concert was billed as ‘Fundamental Forces’, but the disparate collection of works confused me. What could a symphony by CPE Bach possibly have to do with an early work based on a ballet by Prokofiev?
15 Oct · 2022 · Michael Fowler Centre · Anne French
Saturday, 15th October, 2022 There are two rivers in this programme: the Rhine, for which Schumann’s symphony was named, having been written after the Schumanns moved to Düsseldorf, and the Waimapihi Stream, which runs down Aro Valley…
7 Oct · 2022 · St James Theatre · Anne French
The dark stage is raked up to the left. Not steeply, but enough to throw all the lines and angles off plumb. It is bare and black, with a gauze at the front creating spatial ambiguities.
17 Sept · 2022 · Michael Fowler Centre · Anne French
The whole concert took the title ‘Leviathan’, which was, frankly, misleading. Much more than half the concert came from the soundworld of nineteenth-century German romanticism. But still, ‘Leviathan’ was a better marketing pitch. And the…
7 Aug · 2022 · Michael Fowler Centre · Anne French
Sunday 7 August, 2.00 pm This was the third and final concert of the Immerse series, programmed and timed to attract a family audience. And some kids attended, although they were quite hard to spot. It’s not every parent or grand-parent…
6 Aug · 2022 · Michael Fowler Centre · Anne French
‘Style and Substance’ – NZSO’s Immerse 2022 Festival Brahms Violin Concerto in D major, Opus 77 Tabea Squire Variations John Adams Doctor Atomic Symphony Hilary Hahn, violin Gemma New. conductor Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington Saturday 6…
19 Jun · 2022 · St Andrew’s on The Terrace · Anne French
Sunday 19 June 2022 A cold grey afternoon in the middle of winter. But the programme looked interesting: a Czech club sandwich with a slice of Bowater. The New Zealand Chamber Soloists have a history of commissioning new works. The work by…
11 Jun · 2022 · Michael Fowler Centre · Anne French
Brahms wrote his Alto Rhapsody for the wedding of Clara’s third daughter, Julie, in 1869. The second work on the programme was written by Clara Weick, as she then was, between the ages of 13 and 15. And Robert Schumann’s Symphony No 4,…
1 May · 2022 · St Andrew’s on The Terrace · Anne French
Sunday, 1 May 2022 This was the first concert of a new season for Wellington Chamber Music, and the organisers must have been anxious. The pandemic has changed audiences and the business of giving concerts. Would they come?
18 Dec · 2021 · Old St Paul’s · Anne French
Saturday, 18th December, 2021 The Queen’s Closet is an early music ensemble specialising in ‘historically-inspired’ performance of music from the English Restoration (1660-1714, approximately) on period instruments at Baroque pitches. The…
18 Dec · 2021 · Anne French
Nota Bene at the Hilma af Klint Exhibition Wellington City Gallery Saturday 18 December, 11.30 am and 12.15 pm The City Gallery invited Nota Bene to perform a short programme (about 20 minutes of a capella music) to accompany their…
18 Nov · 2021 · St Andrew’s on The Terrace · Anne French
Thursday 18 November, 2021 These well-known singers, old friends and opera collagues, are accustomed to presenting a lunchtime concert at this time of year, and the programme was an interesting mix of songs that reflected their tastes and…
15 Nov · 2021 · Anne French
Sunday, 14 November 2021 This concert, like its predecessor on Friday 12 November, was delayed by the Covid-19 Level 4/3 restrictions in August and September, and was also displaced from the Hunter Council Chamber to St Peter’s Church. The…
20 Oct · 2021 · St Andrew’s on The Terrace · Anne French
Wednesday 20 October 2021 From 26 March to 27 May 2020, when New Zealand was locked down in Alert Level 4 and many of us were watching Netflix in our pyjamas until it was time for the 1 pm press briefing, the Maurice-Maitra family were…
3 Oct · 2021 · St Andrew’s on The Terrace · Anne French
Wellington Chamber Music presents: Amici Ensemble LISZT – Piano Trio “Carnival de Pest” MOZART – String Quintet in G Minor K.516 CHAUSSON – Concert for Violin, Piano and String Quartet St.Andrews-on-The-Terrace Sunday, 3rd October…
24 Jul · 2021 · St Andrew’s on The Terrace · Anne French
Saturday, 24 July 2021 This was a concert of two halves, as they say in rugby. The first half consisted of the advertised Mozart Solemn Vespers, and the second half consisted of ‘Evening Music and Lullabies’, on the basis, I suppose, that…
21 Jul · 2021 · Public Trust Hall · Anne French
Wednesday 21 July, 2021 Jazz is a polarizing genre. For aficionados, it’s all about innovation, pushing the boundaries, expanding the genre whilst respecting its traditions. Technical skill is prized, but always in the service of new…
18 Jul · 2021 · St Andrew’s on The Terrace · Anne French
Wellington Chamber Music series – Jade Quartet JOSEF HAYDN – ‘Seven Last Words of Our Saviour on the Cross’ Op. 51 (extracts) DAVID HAMILTON – String Quartet No 3, Quartetto Piccolo (2021) PETER ADAMS – ‘Proclamations, Canons and Dances’…
11 Jul · 2021 · Michael Fowler Centre · Anne French
Sunday 11th July, 2021 It was going to be something of a risk, programming a work by the NYO Composer in Residence against one of the greatest symphonies of the twentieth century. A risk – or an act of faith.
9 Jul · 2021 · Michael Fowler Centre · Anne French
Friday 9 July, 6.30 pm, Michael Fowler Centre A new work by Gareth Farr is always an event, so it was no surprise to see the Michael Fowler Centre completely full. The stage was completely full as well, with an enormous percussion section…
4 Jul · 2021 · St Andrew’s on The Terrace · Anne French
Sunday 4th July 2021 For as long as I can remember, Wellington Chamber Orchestra has been a player-run orchestra which engages conductors by the concert. This, I suppose, has some advantages. It gives the orchestra maximum freedom and…
19 Jun · 2021 · Wellington Cathedral of St Paul · Anne French
Saturday 19 June 2021 It was a drear Wellington night. A cold drizzle was falling. I expected to see a tiny dedicated audience huddling in the cavernous cathedral. I was wrong.
30 May · 2021 · St Andrew’s on The Terrace · Anne French
Saturday, 29 May 2021 This concert was billed as ‘five centuries of British music’, but in truth it was two and a half centuries plus Tallis, or even one and a half centuries plus Handel and Tallis. Nonetheless, it was a stylish concert.