Drama, intensity and power held in checkChristchurch City Choir Saturday 7 December 2024 – Christchurch Town Hall Sarah-Jane Rennie – Soprano; Catrin Johnsson – Mezzo Soprano; Patrick Power – Tenor; Samuel McKeever – Bass Christchurch Symphony Orchestra Conductor: John Linker As the first notes of the Overture emerged from the orchestra I was struck by a sense of awe and anticipation as we were about to experience Handel’s great masterpiece. Although I’m a late starter in appreciating Handel’s genius, he has now become one of my favourite composers. Beethoven considered him to be ‘the greatest composer of all time’, and Messiah has certainly become one of, if not ‘the’, most-performed works in the history of music. While Handel’s forty-two operas sank into oblivion, not a single one being performed for 150 years after his death, and his thirty-or-so other oratorios fairing almost as badly, Messiah survived, thrived and conquered the world. And, although his other stage works are now frequently performed and recorded, Messiah remains at the forefront of the Handel revival. To a large extent tonight’s Christchurch City Choir performance realised the greatness of Handel’s creation with superbly refined singing from the choir and more than serviceable performances from the soloists. But the star of this performance was the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra with playing of consistent vitality, attention to detail and finesse. Thomas Eve’s solo trumpet in the Hallelujah Chorus deserves special mention for its flair, nuance, musicianship and dynamic contrast – a true highlight of the evening. The strings’ unwavering tonal splendour and Grant Bartley’s sparkling harpsichord contribution were the foundation of the performance, with oboe, bassoon, timpani and organ providing additional colour and contrast throughout the work’s duration. While the vocal soloists were variable, the men certainly shone in their share of the arias. Patrick Power’s professional singing career must have surpassed fifty years by now, but his firmness of tone and easy projection of appealing tone-quality remain intact. If the voice didn’t always respond exactly as he might have wished, his sense of musical line and dramatic storytelling became an increasingly welcome feature of the performance. Samuel McKeever’s big, comfortable bass sound sometimes blurred tonality and melodic shape, but his open-hearted presentation of recitatives was a notable strength. Sarah-Jane Rennie’s focused soprano added variety to the vocal line-up without quite communicating the poise and emotional punch of her solos, while Catrin Johnsson’s warm-toned mezzo was far too under-powered and tonally inconsistent to realise the heart-rending pathos of her great Part II aria He was Despised. But this was primarily a Christchurch City Choir event in the tradition of the English choral societies which developed on the heels of Handel’s oratorios, especially Messiah. Tonight, however, we returned to something closer to the expressive intimacy of Handel’s own time. The choir’s opening chorus And the Glory of the Lord was an uplifting start to their contribution. However, by the time we reached their next turn, And He Shall Purify, a sense of well-trained and fine-toned restraint seemed to have taken over so that the drama and storytelling failed to register. The same was the case later in For Unto Us a Child is Born, where the joy and excitement of lines like “and His Name shall be called wonderful, councillor” conveyed a rather subdued sense of awe and wonder or, as W. S. Gilbert might have said, “modified rapture”. After the interval, in Part II, the choir seemed to have revived its spirits somewhat, so that the opening Behold the Lamb of God had some real drama which carried through to the three successive choruses culminating in the dancing and delightful All We Like Sheep. The great Hallelujah! chorus was magnificent and, although the performers were suddenly hidden from my view by the tiresomely distracting tradition of the audience in front of me standing, I revelled in the radiance of the choral and orchestral sound and in Handel’s gloriously uplifting layers of joy and exultation. In his introduction in the programme notes, conductor John Linker talks about his choir looking forward to “an opportunity to refine this work further and produce even greater artistic expression.” ‘Refinement’ was definitely achieved throughout the evening by both choir and orchestra. Linker directed his forces with clarity and nuanced shaping of phrase and dynamic contrast. For me, though, it was perhaps somewhat too controlled and shaped. It wasn’t until we reached the final peroration of the Amen chorus (starting with just the soloists – a variant that I’m not familiar with) that Linker encouraged his singers to give us, as Francis Yapp’s programme note promised us, “drama, intensity, and power”. And that, predictably, brought the audience to its feet. I’m glad that Messiah remains a staple of pre-Christmas music-making in Christchurch and, although it’s a very long time since I last attended a live performance of this great work, I’m grateful for the opportunity of experiencing tonight’s reunion.
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Conductor: Benjamin Northey Anna Leese – Soprano Lili Boulanger – D'un soir triste (Of a Sad Evening) Barber – Knoxville: Summer of 1915 Mahler – Symphony No. 4 in G Major Performances to admire rather than to rejoice in ‘Restraint’ was the overall approach to this programme and despite the care over detail and the refined attention to balance, dynamics, phrasing and timbre, I longed for more abandon, more expressive freedom and . . . well – more risk. But with RNZ microphones very much in evidence, I suppose risk was off the table. Although the programme notes talk about Lili Boulanger’s originality and depth of expressive feeling, tonight’s performance of her D'un soir triste conveyed more self-contained tastefulness than anything more deeply emotional. The composer uses an exceptionally large orchestra, and the use of low brass and wind sometimes communicated an element of introspective brooding, if not quite with the individuality and personality that can be found in her contemporaries such as Debussy or Fauré. D'un soir triste is certainly an appealing work; its harmonic exoticism (including hints of orientalism) and variety of orchestral colour made it an enticing and innovative opening to tonight’s concert. Samuel Barber’s wonderfully nostalgic Knoxville: Summer of 1915 of 1948, using a text by American poet James Agee, is among the greatest of American masterpieces and, in my view, among the finest works of the twentieth century. There’s something quintessentially and indefinably American about its evocative opening on wind instruments and its lilting, rocking-chair, rhythm. But the airy freedom of expression this music needs seemed too contained and careful. There was a notable lack of contrasting drama in the orchestral transition to the ‘Streetcar’ section, which was then reflected in soprano, Anna Leese’s restrained projection. What is it about solo voices in this acoustic? Well, at least some voices. Anna Leese’s projection tended to be swallowed by the vastness of the space, resulting in a certain lack of focus, especially in her many expressive softer dynamics. A quiet flute or cor anglais solo seemed able to cut through the texture in a way the voice could not. One of my favourite passages in this glorious work is the return to sentiments of nostalgia when the singer describes lying on quilts “on the rough wet grass”, but contrasts between the more dramatic moments and the homesick wistfulness of other sections tended to be smoothed out rather than highlighted. The singer’s involvement in the musical expression and responsive engagement with the text were always in evidence, but I missed the open-hearted childlike rapture that the composer surely intended at lines such as “One is my mother who is good to me”; and then, the following dramatic climax at “By some chance, here they are, all on this earth” went for too little. The final movement of Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 requires the same childlike wonder from the singer. And here Anna Leese’s expressive projection bloomed. Her flowing legato and full-bodied vocal tone remained intact even in the most intimate episodes. And the rapture that I missed in the Barber was fully and ecstatically evident when “Saint Ursula laughs” [to see eleven thousand maidens dancing] near the end of the movement. In that final movement, at last conductor Benjamin Northey allowed the orchestra a slightly longer leash, although his focus was otherwise on subtlety and refinement and, to both his and the orchestra’s credit, those qualities were present in abundance. In fact, the detail was astonishing with every minute gradation of dynamics and balance fully realised. String portamenti and articulation were judged to an impressive nicety, while the huge variety of range and timbre that Mahler asks of the horns in the unusual (for Mahler) absence of trombones and tuba, was simply phenomenal. Fearlessly led by Emma Eden, the whole horn section added tremendous colour and drama to the performance. Wind and percussion also played with considerable finesse with Ashleigh Mowbray’s cor anglais solos standing out with genuine personality. But, while this was a performance of superb technical accomplishment, it was a one to admire rather than to rejoice in. The deliberately paced opening movement failed to sparkle and, while ‘Deliberate’ is the composer’s own instruction, I feel that he means it in its purposeful sense rather than its ponderous connotation. In the same way, the second movement seemed to resist wanting to dance, so that even Justine Cormack’s finely played scordatura violin solo failed to fully express the country-dance effect that Mahler wanted. And, if the great adagio movement that followed exhibited similar care and control, its final overwhelming climax brought an emotional charge that justified the restraint that preceded it. So, if these performances didn’t always excite and elevate in the way they ideally should, there was much to admire, and Benjamin Northey certainly achieved some finely-honed playing from his orchestra. See also abridged version in The Press Although Part 1 of my reaction to the government’s short-sighted, ill-informed, and regressive attitude to education, is predominantly based on personal experience and observation, it’s still, surely, valid, compelling and reliable evidence. But there’s also a wealth of thoroughly researched evidence which supports my observations, and which has often surprised the researchers and confounded those who seek to dismiss their findings. One such researcher is Dr Anita Collins, an educator, researcher and writer in the field of neuroscience and music education at the University of Canberra, who believes that music education is the key to raising literacy and numeracy standards. After publishing her research nearly ten years ago, Dr Collins summarised her findings for the Sydney Morning Herald where she writes: “Based on neuroscientific research, the approach used at present of ‘more time in the basics means better results’ may well be flawed.” She goes on to say that “it may be time to consider a very old idea that has been made new again by neuroscientific research, that is: music education – the neural network enhancer.” Some of us have known this for many years from personal experience. I, like many school music teachers, chose my profession (and stayed in it) because of my belief in music’s value in education. We’ve consistently observed that kids who learn a musical instrument or participate in a school orchestra, jazz ensemble, rock band, or choir, demonstrate far greater engagement with other aspects of their learning. I can name many former students who would have left school much earlier but for their involvement in music. I will even confidently go so far as to say that students who miss classes in order to attend music lessons, or to rehearse in a school production or music group, are noticeably better organised, focused and positive, not to mention having higher self-esteem and, thus, a better foundation for learning, than those who don’t. I could also name many socially reticent, shy or otherwise insecure students who, once they ventured to learn a musical instrument, blossomed, thrived and succeeded in other aspects of school, as well as in their lives beyond. All of this is confirmed by Anita Collins’s findings when she concludes that “Two decades of research has now found that music education grows, hones and permanently improves neural networks like no other activity. Children who undertake formal, ongoing musical education have significantly higher levels of cognitive capacity, specifically in their language acquisition and numerical problem-solving skills. They also continue in education for longer, reverse the cognitive issues related to disadvantage and earn and contribute more on average across their lifetime.” I can remember one rare year at the school where I worked, when the dux prize, considered the supreme achievement at prizegiving or graduation, was awarded to a student of whom I was totally unaware; an individual who had not participated in any performing arts or sport or club or school communal activity; a student who had, as I saw it, taken and not given; one who had failed to engage or contribute to the community from which they benefitted. Thankfully, it was predominantly the school’s musicians, actors and sports participants who achieved the award – the students whose engagement in learning, participating and contributing was beyond the measurements that examinations or standardised tests can demonstrate – and beyond the parameters imposed by Christopher Luxon’s stated intention in this year’s budget of “Teaching the Basics Brilliantly”, because his concept of what constitutes ‘the basics’ is alarmingly flawed and limited. Ten years ago Anita Collins faced government meddling similar to that which the PM and his coadjutors are now trying to impose on New Zealand. At the time, she wrote that “research flies in the face of suggestions in the Australian Government's Review of the Australian Curriculum this year that music and arts education should only be started after Grade 3 so students could get a handle on the core literacy and numeracy requirements.” In our county’s current climate of government cuts and premature interference, it’s sobering to read Collins’s evidence that finds there is more harm being done than improvements made: “Music education is often one of the first programs to be cut or scaled back when the purse strings are tightened in a school. Again, when considering the research that now exists, this also seems flawed. Many of the intervention programs that are in operation in schools may find they are less in demand if music education is viewed not as an extra but as a concurrent neural enhancer to literacy and numeracy education.” And Dr Collins’s research is verified and reflected in the work of many others, just a few examples of which include:
But that’s just the formal, scientific research. From the 1980’s, the late Sir Ken Robinson was a famously insightful commentator on the essential nature of music and the arts in education. His inspired and engaging ‘stand-up’ style presentations were derived from observation, perception and insight and, for anyone who is serious about understanding the benefits of music in education, his 2007 TED talk (available on YouTube) ‘Do Schools Kill Creativity?’ is essential viewing. Three minutes into his talk, Robinson contends that “Creativity is now as important in education as literacy” and goes on to develop a hypothesis that endorses Picasso’s famous dictum that “All children are born artists; the problem is to remain an artist as we grow up.” Again, there are numerous articles and papers that support this including Tham Khai Meng, writing in The Guardian (2015), who asserts that “Everyone is born creative, but it is educated out of us at school”, and he goes on to describe how “We spend our childhoods being taught the artificial skill of passing exams”. Further worthwhile (and often entertaining) viewing on these topics (the arts, literacy, creativity) include another Robinson presentation – ‘Boundless Possibilities’. Ironically, Sir Ken Robinson’s knighthood was for ‘services to the arts’; a rather limiting substitute for what surely should have been ‘services to education and the arts’. But perhaps I do Christopher Luxon a disservice; perhaps he actually does understand the value of music as a literacy enhancer. Maybe it’s just that he can’t say that in the face of his voters, so his quick-fix solutions are all about seeming to have the answers, however temporary – just as long as it takes him through to the next election. In the meantime, he has no qualms about pretending to care about education and purporting to know better than experienced educators about what should be done. “Isn’t it great to be in government?” asked the deputy National party leader in her opening statement at the party’s recent conference. Could there be a clearer indication that their policies are nothing more than populist vote-catchers, even if that results in New Zealand sinking into artistic, scientific and political insignificance – id est: Making New Zealand Small Again. Finally, as much for your entertainment as for your erudition, watch singer-songwriter Bobby McFerrin’s ‘The Power of the Pentatonic Scale’ at the 2009 World Science Festival. When the New Zealand prime minister Christopher Luxon says that he is “prepared to see schools deferring the arts and music curriculum to raise achievement in maths and reading”, he shows such a dearth of understanding of how the arts support and enhance maths and literacy, that he is already a leading cause of their further deterioration. There’s a standing joke in our car whenever we head off to a concert – “there seems to be a lot of traffic tonight; I suppose they’re all heading to the concert.” – They’re not of course, but, while the concert hall might be full, it’s still a small percentage of the city’s population. And in Christchurch where I live, the orchestral musicians on stage comprise a significant number of Eastern Europeans and other immigrants from countries where music education is considered one of the basics. While most New Zealand schools are more-or-less a level playing field for what are traditionally considered ‘academic’ subjects, the number that can boast high-quality music programmes is variable at best – and, if Mr Luxon has his way, about to get smaller. Speaking of ‘small’ . . . Long ago I attended the smallest of the three secondary schools that boys could attend in a South Island town. The school had fewer than two hundred students and around nine or ten teachers, none of whom was a music or drama or art or physical education specialist, despite the requirements of the New Zealand curriculum even in those days. At my school, in order to pay lip-service to the music curriculum, various teachers (a different one each year as I remember) would enlist the help of the nearest student slaves to haul a record player and its speakers to our classroom where he (always ‘he’) would play a classical LP (‘vinyl’ in today speak) while he marked work of his specialist subject, and we ‘studied’. To this day I still wonder if, on the day that Frank Twiss played Leopold Stokowski’s recording of Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony, any of my 5th form (year 11) classmates experienced even a fraction of the Damascus moment that changed my life that afternoon. With my chemistry homework untouched on my desk, I was gripped and transported by the music as my physical surroundings faded into irrelevancy and made that token lip-service one of the most productive and rewarding lessons of Frank’s career, although he never knew it. I went to him and asked about the music after class, but he seemed to think I was taking the mickey and told me that “you’d have done better to get more work done Ryan!” as he returned the LP to its sleeve and strutted away. With a piano at home (not an uncommon household item in those days), I organised piano lessons for myself at the age of nine, an expense my parents could ill afford, but indulged nevertheless. I later realised that I’d always responded to music in a more intense way than most, but, as a teenager, it was mainly the current popular chart-toppers that engaged my active interest and which I played by ear on the piano, although the occasional short well-known classical piece certainly made a periodic impression when it chanced to emerge from a commercial radio station's listener request programme. But nothing had penetrated the depths of my being like that Tchaikovsky symphony and its forty-five-minute world of unrelenting power, sweeping passion, and heart-stopping emotional expression. I was so overwhelmed that soon the money I earned from my holiday job began to disappear on whatever random recordings I could find in the thread-bare classical bins of the town’s department stores. And so began a life-long exploration of the art of music, and many years of rewarding adventures in pursuit of its infinite revelations. In my final year of school, I persuaded my parents and my school to allow me to take music as a Bursary subject (now NCEA level 3). This could only be achieved by my travelling to one of the girls’ schools for music classes, but such inter-school timetabling wasn’t unknown in our town, so the deal was done! Unfortunately it clashed with my other most favourite subject – Latin – a compromise that, on balance, had to be accepted. The job money, intended to fund me through university in a year or two, needed subsidising considerably by my father who, when he discovered that my original maths and science focus had changed to music, expressed the hope that “it will end in a job”. At that point, a job was the last thing on my mind, but with the eventual guidance of a wise and pragmatic woman (who remains the main influence in anchoring my feet to terra firma), ‘job’ status was achieved! And so I became a secondary school music teacher and spent the next forty-or-so years indulging my preoccupation with music by inflicting its compulsive properties on thousands of unsuspecting teenagers. My own performing and composition continued alongside ‘the job’, but the job proved to be a life-long learning experience that benefitted me as much as it did my students. And working with young people continues to inform, shape, enhance and sustain all the other music-making that I’m still fortunate to be involved with. As a teacher, I was lucky to always enjoy the support of colleagues and principals who valued and often participated in the music-making that brought such fulfilling rewards to the school community. Of course, there was the odd short-sighted ‘academic’ who believed that music and drama were a distraction from real subjects and real learning; one Head of Science going so far as to refer to the performing arts as “the entertainment subjects”. And now, in New Zealand, we have a prime minister who promotes that same antediluvian attitude. But ‘entertainment’ is so far from the core value of music, that only someone who has never experienced its humanity and spirituality, and who views the world in monochrome, could possibly see it that way. Anyway, music is both an art and a science. Its logic, acoustics and sound properties, all require practical scientific understanding. Its rhythms are mathematically complex; its stylistic variety and its use in different eras, societies, cultures, conflicts and ceremonies provides unique lessons in history and sociology; its wide variety of foreign words and musical terms gives insight into many languages and the ways in which different cultures think (Another lesson for today's NZ government?) Its need for co-ordination, good posture, stamina and accuracy contributes to physical fitness; and its symbols, terms and notation is enhanced literacy in action. And it stimulates the neural circuit (sometimes called the ‘reading circuit’) of the brain. But music is also an art which brings all of those different disciplines together for emotional expression, intellectual insights, poetic and imaginative creativity, cultural identity, mutual respect and understanding, and, above all, humanity. Music by Chris Adams 7.00pm Saturday 10 February 2024 at The Piano, Christchurch Reviewed by Tony Ryan Tonight’s concert title is a reference to the composer’s wife who inspired much of the music on the programme and participated in the original performances of several of the works. Helen Acheson died last year, and this evening’s choice of music is very much in memory of her as a singer, musician and person. A total of eight works comprising thirty-two separate movements is an ambitious undertaking for a single concert, especially when all the music is by one composer with nine individual musicians in various combinations and permutations. And I imagine that, for most of the audience, everything on the programme is new – a daunting prospect for performers, composer and audience alike. However, the Quintet for wind and strings which opened the programme proved instantly engaging and absorbing. Each of the six movements had its own specific character, and demonstrated a wide range of imaginative contrasts, moods and textures. The opening phrase of horn player Alex Morton’s only appearance on tonight’s programme, gave the first movement Proclamation an immediate and communicative impact that set the tone for the whole work. Two of the movements are interludes for solo instruments and I found Jeremy Garside’s playing of the fifth movement Lament for solo cello particularly moving. Brief as it was, it remains my personal highlight of the entire evening. The one niggle I have with the performance of the Quintet is the placement of the violin in the ensemble’s stage layout. Perhaps being placed opposite the right-seated cello, instead of beside it, would have enabled the violin balance to emerge more equally with the more prominent sound of the other four instruments, especially in its almost inaudible pizzicato passages. ‘Character’ emerged as one of two key attributes of Chris Adams’ music tonight. Clearly identifiable and characterful motifs gave each movement an expressive appeal that kept the good-sized audience engaged throughout the two-hour duration. The other key feature of Adams’ music tonight is ‘intimacy’, a word which the composer himself used in his short spoken introduction. Although in most of the works that intimacy included elements of vitality, joy and occasional bursts of real exuberance, the Viola Sonata that ended the first part of the programme focused on the more introverted and thoughtful aspects of intimacy. Sophia Acheson and Jeremy Woodside gave us a committed performance of this elegiac piece, but it was the work that I found less effective than the others. But then, I have also often found that it’s the music I have to work hardest to assimilate that returns the greatest rewards over time. Soprano, Nicola Holt, was the only singer in tonight’s programme. Her light but clearly-focused timbre is ideally matched to the four works to which she contributed. A Song Cycle and Three Songs on Old Texts, both originally written for Helen Acheson, revealed Adams’ ability to respond intuitively to his chosen texts, with elements of humour, sentiment, spontaneity and directness that felt slightly more instinctive than in the more meticulously controlled instrumental-only pieces. The Dowland Fragments later in the programme allowed Holt’s higher tessitura to shine, almost as if these five very appealing songs were written for a different singer than the two earlier sets. The addition of a violin obligato part in these songs was beautifully and sensitively played by Sarah McCracken; I especially enjoyed her delightfully articulated lute-like accompaniment in the fourth song. Flautist, Hannah Darroch demonstrated total mastery of her instrument in three Art Miniatures where Adams’ imaginative exploration of the flute’s wide variety of techniques and effects was used for myriad and effective expressive diversity. A similar array of effects and techniques contributed to the appeal of Maud, a string quartet in which all four musicians highlighted the concert’s overall polish and professionalism, as well as both the consistency and variety of Chris Adams’ imaginative mastery of his craft as a composer. Two extracts from a chamber opera, River Lavalle, brought most of the musicians back to the stage to end the evening and, if we didn’t go out into the unseasonal rain exactly humming the tunes, there was certainly much to enjoy in this programme, and much that I’d like to hear again. According to Eda Tang (Stuff – 24 March 2023), NZ Opera’s production of its newly commissioned The Unruly Tourists “is everything I want to see happen to classical music”. She goes on: “Too long has opera held onto tradition, languages that people pretend to understand, and upper-middle class etiquette.” I suppose that no offence is intended by Eda Tang’s rather confrontational tone, but ‘offensive’ is exactly how the phrase “languages that people pretend to understand” sounds. (We’ll overlook “upper-middle class etiquette” except to suggest that Ms Tang should witness the remarkably diverse audience mix at most opera performances.) But do first-language English-speaking operagoers really ‘pretend’ to understand the languages when Verdi and Puccini are sung in Italian, or Wagner and Strauss in German, or Bizet and Berlioz in French? I certainly wish I was more familiar with those languages when attending such operas, and even more so when watching international movies on Netflix, which I do rather often. But, like those movies, opera performances almost always come with surtitles or even, in many theatres, a choice of languages displayed on the back of the seat in front. None of us ‘pretend’ to understand other languages in these situations and even when we do (my French isn’t too shabby at a performance of Carmen), the surtitles are still helpful, even when the opera is in English. Does Ms Tang not realise that operas are written in the language of their creators (apart from an initial period of dominance by the Italians, who created and developed the genre – what a debt we owe them!)? As an experienced reviewer myself, I try to avoid making assumptions about things that I’m unsure of or unfamiliar with, but reviewer Tang confidently asserts that The Unruly Tourists “moves opera into modern contexts”, as if to suggest that this is something new. She appears completely unaware of some very significant evidence that totally annihilates such an assertion. Opera composers, librettists and directors have been moving opera “into modern contexts” for centuries, and continue to do so even more in our own time. Handel’s exceptionally popular eighteenth-century operas (frequently based on characters and historical events from ancient civilisations, and written by a German composer in Italian for an English-speaking audience) were, from the outset, staged with contemporary costumes and sets, and with significant and deliberate references to the social and political climate of Handel’s own era. How often since then have we seen Handel’s operas or, say, La Traviata or La Bohème or Cosi fan Tutte or the Ring Cycle set in our own or recent, or even a future or fantasy time? Well, I and multitudes of others have, but it seems that Ms Tang has not. And the whole reason that those operas have survived and remain hugely popular (unlike hundreds of others, pertinent and fashionable at their time, but now forgotten) is because of their enduring and universal relevance. As the great Scottish director Robert Carson says, regarding his penchant for staging operas and plays in modern dress and settings, “We mustn’t let the audience off the hook; people need to see themselves portrayed on the stage”. Such operas may not always or easily appeal to the faint-hearted who are unwilling to delve deeper to uncover their truths and riches, or to seekers of a quick-and-superficial entertainment fix, but their spiritual and artistic depths and resonances are at the heart of our humanity and broader cultural consciousness. Even more importantly, Eda Tang seems wholly oblivious of the vast range of operas written in English and to the huge number written in a wide range of languages in our own time. Apparently she has missed the recent innovative and thought-provoking productions by Christchurch’s Toi Toi Opera, which not only put twentieth century English language operas in front of us, but demonstrate some truly imaginative ideas on how to make the genre of opera directly relevant to its audiences. Within the world of ‘classical’ music, depending on how you interpret that word (It is, after all, just a label coined to try to identify certain characteristics of a body of musical works), there have been many recent innovations that blur the traditional lines between opera, sonata, symphony and all manner of other forms that have acquired sub-labels intended to distinguish particular characteristics. The concept of ‘opera’ has acquired an understanding of being a music-theatre piece involving a particular style of singing and including an orchestra, and there are many new examples that easily fit that concept. Opera companies and music festivals all over the world have brought us a hugely diverse range of new operas – to name a few of the more high-profile examples: Thomas Adès The Exterminating Angel, John Corigliano’s The Ghosts of Versailles, Philip Glass’s The Voyage, Satyagraha and Akhnaten, Tan Dun’s The First Emperor, John Adams’ Nixon in China, The Death of Klinghoffer, and Doctor Atomic, Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking, Anthony Davis’s X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X, Nico Muhly’s Two Boys and Marnie, Kaija Saariaho’s L’Amour de Loin – the list is endless! And in the last little while, New York’s Met Opera has commissioned and staged Ricky Ian Gordon’s Intimate Apparel, Terence Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up in My Bones, Matthew Aucoin’s Eurydice and, most moving and extraordinary of all, Kevin Puts’s The Hours. And here in New Zealand, Kenneth Young’s The Strangest of Angels was premièred less than a year ago. These operas range in their subject matter from political and social subjects, to plots exploring racism, sexuality, ethical dilemmas and so much more. Not having had an opportunity to see NZ Opera’s The Unruly Tourists myself, I cannot comment on Eda Tang’s assessment of its merits, but based on the short promotional and news-media audio-visual clips that I’ve seen, when Tang states “If you like The Book of Mormon, King George III from Hamilton the musical and are a self-professed JAFA, you’ll probably enjoy The Unruly Tourists”, I’d say she’s probably bang on the nail in terms of theatrical and musical type. But her reference to being “a self-professed JAFA” surely trivialises the creators’ aspirations by parochialising the whole shebang. And would either of those two examples (The Book of Mormon and Hamilton) pretend to be opera? Both are consistently and universally referred to as ‘musicals’ or ‘musical comedies’, so why is The Unruly Tourists referred to as an ‘opera’? Is it because of its being produced by an opera company? Or is because people like the reviewer just want it to be one? And when Ms Tang asks “did they really just set those words to [sic] an opera?” and then goes on to assert that only in Aotearoa would you hear certain colloquialisms that she quotes “set into [sic] classical music”, well, I guess there’s no harm in blurring the boundaries if you’re clear about the characteristics of the different genres; but I’d certainly take issue with any idea that such colloquialisms are in any way new to musicals, opera, or any other theatrical form. But why does she call it ‘classical music’? It may well be (. . . or not?), and anyway, what does it matter? But Tang appears to want to take aim at her skewed idea of ‘classical music’. In any case, she seems to be aligning The Unruly Tourists with a different musical genre with which she has a much easier affinity. So, if that is what she wants “to see happen to classical music”, I can only infer that the statement at the start of her review, and which I’ve used as my headline, indicates a rather self-important and condescending antipathy to a huge body of the profoundly eloquent and powerful musical treasures of our diverse world. And many of those treasures are riotously comic; that is part of their profundity. Finally, as for suggesting that we can enjoy a cheap night out at The Unruly Tourists rather than “fork out hundreds to go to watch La Traviata”, I guess the same applies to the recent visits by Ed, Elton and Rod. Again – is Eda Tang’s ‘review’ deliberately offensive, or is it just sloppy journalism? Can we no longer expect genuinely informed, considered, and knowledgeable evaluation of the performing arts from some of our mainstream media? My Recording of the Year could also be described as my Performance of the Year, or even perhaps, in this case, of the decade and beyond. But who am I to judge? And even if my opinion counts, what about all the recordings and performances that I don’t personally experience? Luckily, publications like Gramophone, Fanfare, BBC Music Magazine and various online platforms provide extensive guidance to the numerous recorded performances that become available each year, and their annual awards highlight many rewarding performances. Gramophone’s monthly Editor’s Choice and annual Recordings of the Year awards have led me to many treasured recordings that I might otherwise have missed. For me, last year’s Gramophone Awards included just one recording that struck a special chord – an absolutely stunning (“sensational” was Gramophone’s word; and I couldn’t disagree) Mahler Symphony No. 7 from Kirill Petrenko and the Bayerisches Staatsorchester taking out the Orchestral Recording of the Year. The winners of the choral and instrumental categories are also treasurable, if not quite the knock-out that the Bavarian orchestra delivers. And I do look forward to exploring the same conductor and label’s Bayerische Staatsoper video recording of Korngold’s Die Tote Stadt which won the opera category as well as being voted Record of the Year. Because, although it’s possible to listen to almost all the winners and other nominees with the benefit of a streaming subscription, I don’t have access to the video format in the same way. The preamble to Gramophone’s 2022 Awards issue states that recordings reviewed between June 2021 and May 2022 are eligible for selection, which immediately limits the choice to recordings that Gramophone has reviewed. One might think that any recording considered worth reviewing would surely come their way, but my own personal Record of the Year, along with many others (e.g. those released on the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra’s own label), was never evaluated by Gramophone’s reviewers. So, why Bruce Xiaoyu Liu’s Deutsche Grammophon recording of selections from his winning 2021 Chopin Competition performances didn’t make the cut, is beyond me. Praised in Gramophone’s December 2021 issue as “ . . . simply one of the most distinguished Chopin recitals of recent years, full of maturity, character and purpose”, along with similar superlatives from a reviewer who also hoped for the release of an album of more of this pianist’s performances from the competition. In February 2022, that recording came, not from DG, but on the Frederick Chopin Institute label. And that is my recording of the year which none other comes within miles of, however special it might be. But it’s an album that seems to have received no awards at all let alone even a review in Gramophone. Everything on both discs is equally breathtaking – an infrequently heard Rondo à la Mazur that becomes a masterpiece in Liu’s hands; an F Major Ballade that combines poetry and drama so intuitively that it’s like hearing it for the first time; an Andante Spianato and Grande Polonaise Brillante that Gramophone’s reviewer declared to be the best he’d ever heard; an A Flat Waltz whose technical demands are mastered so completely that it sparkles and dances as never before – but it’s the magic of Liu’s performance of the E Minor Piano Concerto which is simply jaw-dropping! It’s as if he’s managed to get inside the composer’s inspiration at the very point of its taking flight, and he delivers a performance of such charisma and heart-in-throat dancing, singing, joyful, and instinctive fervour, that a long familiar and oft-heard favourite comes vividly to life in a way that I find difficult to adequately describe. For now it’s the only performance I can listen to, although long-cherished recordings by Ashkenazy, Zimerman, Argerich, Kissin, Perahia, Pires and others, including the previous Chopin Competition winner Seong-Jin Cho, line my record shelves. No doubt there are knowledgeable sages and guardians of various holy grails who will never allow that anything can surpass, say, Zimerman or Pollini or Rubenstein or Lipatti, or any number of others, but for now, for me, Liu reigns supreme. At the 2021 XVIII International Chopin Piano Competition many other fine pianists gave excellent performances of this same concerto, but listening to those or watching them on YouTube, the superior inspirational magic of Bruce Liu’s playing eludes them. His ability to subtly colour or highlight a passing phrase or figuration frequently has me smiling or even laughing out loud at the sheer wonder of it; and it’s all done with such an intuition for light and shade, delicacy and ardour, tonal silver or velvet, and all manner of other intangible contrasts. As I write, the recording is playing again and Liu has just reached his entry in the concerto’s second movement Romance and, although I’ve played the disc so many times already, its heart-felt expressive quality hasn’t diminished in the slightest. Each time I play the recording, now always several self-disciplined weeks apart, I worry that the magic will be lost but, thankfully, there it still is. I first heard and saw Liu’s concerto performance on YouTube after the competition and wondered if it would retain the same mesmerising impact in audio only. I need not have feared; whatever visual wizardry enhanced that first experience remains fully present when just listening. And there too in this live performance is the smiling and idiomatic support from the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra and conductor Andrey Boreyko, and the elated shouts of acclaim from the audience even before the orchestra has played its final chords, and then they’re on their feet with a seemingly involuntary need to demonstrate their enraptured appreciation of a performance of a lifetime. As one commenter on the YouTube video observes – “This dude is so good the lady in the wheelchair stands up to applaud”, and so she does, such is the miracle of Bruce Liu’s performance. In the twenty-five years or more that I’ve been a professional music and theatre reviewer, none of my reviews have been censored. Some have been slightly edited due to space constraints, but none actually censored – until now that is! Yes, there have been many face-to-face comments from friends, acquaintances, colleagues and others, and a few private correspondents who have agreed (mainly) with my published reviews and acknowledged my insights. A few people have said they don’t agree with everything I’ve said or written about any particular performance, but only one, a certain Melissa Lo (whose pronouns and age I can only guess at – so I won’t), who, in the comments below my Theatreview review, disagreed with my appraisal of a production of the musical Wicked so vehemently that all rationality was abandoned by presuming my pronouns, skin colour and age, and ‘guessing’ (Melissa’s word) that I was “a bitter old white male who didn't understand the magical world of Oz”. Melissa went on to declare: “I wasn't at the performance and plan to see it this week,” and continued “I don’t doubt that I will be cheering for the whole cast and crew for their amazing performance”. I resisted the temptation to assure Melissa that, unlike him/her/them, I write my reviews after attending a performance, not before. And I don’t think anyone who knows me would call me “bitter”. Some of my other reviews might help to change Melissa's mind, so perhaps my review of another contemporary musical from the same directors might be a good place to start. But maybe Melissa is right about my not understanding the “magical world of Oz”, a land in which author L. Frank Baum (1856-1919), as reinterpreted in Wicked by Gregory Maguire, sees life through fairy-tale analogies and parables to assist our grasp of the mysteries of life, even if we can never fully understand them. But it seems that Melissa is much more confident of having a thorough understanding of that "magical world". Personally, I need to draw on a much wider range of experience, knowledge and associations in order to assimilate my published responses to performances. From time to time a musician or music organisation (rather than the usual print, radio or online news media) commissions me to write a review for their own promotional or online platform in the hope that it will then be more widely published, which it often is. Several years ago, the late Christopher Marshall, whose Christopher’s Classics series has reached its twenty-eighth year of providing Christchurch audiences with the very best of Aotearoa’s musical talent, asked me to review the concerts in his series, which I have been doing now since 2017. These days, most newspapers and other media in New Zealand no longer allocate budgets to pay professional reviewers, so most of those reviews have been published on Christopher’s Classics own website – an increasingly common scenario. Christopher always knew that I would maintain my honesty, integrity and unbiased views. He understood that, while some reviews would be politely positive, others might be glowing raves and a number would contain reservations. He often talked to me about what he agreed or disagreed with, but he always valued and respected my knowledge and perceptions. After all, a reviewer is just an individual with an informed opinion, and a different individual will always have their own personal response. All we can do is react to what we see and hear, to describe that response and to say why we have arrived at a particular point-of-view. As a performer myself, I have learned a great deal from others’ opinions, especially when they diverge from my own. But earlier this month, for the first time in my reviewing career, Christopher’s Classics chose not to publish my review of their latest concert featuring cellist Andrew Joyce and pianist Rae de Lisle. They paid me as usual, but I now realise that I could have earned my few dollars by being far less considered, telling the performers and promoters what they wanted to hear, and by taking less trouble than the three hours of writing, research, refining and polishing. I have no problem with them disagreeing with me – I’ve often disagreed with other reviewers’ comments myself; but to fail to publish the review without giving any reason, let alone communicating with me at all about their decision, is surely discourteous and disrespectful at best, and censorship at worst. As I said above, a review is just my own opinion. Every individual member of an audience responds differently to any given performance, and I sometimes wonder if, say, the person in front of me, applauding with vociferous enthusiasm, has genuinely found the music-making as stimulating as I have found it lacklustre, or, when I am moved to the core by a performance, whether anyone around me has shared the same, sometimes life-changing experience. A renewed era of censorship has emerged since the Russian invasion of Ukraine earlier this year. Certain Russian musicians have been censored and censured; some musicians have removed Russian works from their programmes (e.g. see my previous post regarding the Cardiff Philharmonic Orchestra) while others have added Russian pieces to their programmes, especially by composers like Shostakovich who could be said to have written the book regarding musical censorship and political oppression. In this regard, my role as a music reviewer once again came under attack when, back in March, I criticised NZ Chamber Soloists for dropping Shostakovich’s Piano Trio No. 1 from their concerts because, according to them, it “celebrates Russia as a superpower”. I was contacted by the Christchurch Press, as one of their reviewers, and my disagreement with NZ Chamber Soloists’ decision was quoted along with similar comments by others. As it happened, the group’s Christchurch concert was scheduled to be hosted by Christopher’s Classics who, in an email to their subscribers, expressed their disappointment in The Press article and named me as one of the offenders. My review of the ensemble’s concert in June was as subjective in my personal response and as objective in my analysis of the music and its performance as always, but the replacement of Shostakovich’s trio by a rather innocuous and conventional work by Armenian composer, Arno Babajanian, remains, in my view, an insidious example of the growing ‘cancel culture’ style of censorship which is becoming an increasingly worrying trend. In his recent (2019) book Rough Ideas, British pianist Stephen Hough ventures his opinion that “I think it is safe to say that most musicians have predominantly liberal, left-wing views . . .” and, although he claims a degree of political naivety, his book refers to a wide variety of issues that can readily be regarded as political. The fact that so many musicians of both the past and the present often take a stand against various aspects of the political status quo, certainly supports Hough’s statement. Even some of the composers who feature in parts 1 & 2 of my Politics in Music series were political and subversive activists. Richard Wagner went into exile from Germany for fifteen years following his advocacy of revolution and his participation in the failed Dresden Uprising of 1848-49. The pianist and composer Ignacy Jan Paderewski, an outspoken supporter of Polish independence, became Poland’s third Prime Minister in 1919 and was a signatory of the Treaty of Versailles. Mention of Polish independence brings another great Polish pianist to mind. In April 2009 Krystian Zimerman, who has remained one of the world’s most highly regarded pianists since winning the International Chopin Piano Competition in 1975, launched a tirade against the U.S.A's plan to establish a missile defence shield in Poland. At a Sunday night concert in Los Angeles’s Disney Concert Hall, the normally quietly-spoken Zimerman told Americans to “Get your hands off my country”. Many in the audience cheered, some shouted at him to "shut up and play the piano" and, as several people walked out yelling abuse, the pianist told them to “keep marching like the military”. He would no doubt have something to say about the U.S.’s part in supporting the election of Volodymyr Zelenskyy as president of Ukraine in order to facilitate a military presence even closer to the Russian border. That protest wasn’t the first time that Zimerman had spoken out in the U.S. against their policies. In 2006, before playing a Beethoven sonata in Baltimore, he denounced the Guantánamo Bay prison, and later the same year announced that he would not return to the U.S. until George Bush was no longer in office. Zimerman’s attitude to American military policy was probably augmented by incidents involving his personal Steinway piano, which he travelled with on major recital tours. Soon after 9/11, Customs officials at JFK Airport were suspicious about the glue in the framework of his piano, so they seized it and destroyed it! A few years later he tried bringing his new piano into the U.S.A. and Customs again confiscated it, holding it for five days and disrupting his performance schedule. Hungarian pianist András Schiff believes that “it is the responsibility of every politically informed artist to speak out against racial injustice and persecution” and argues that “artists, as sensitive individuals with a societal function, cannot be separated from political affairs.” Along with statements about politics in Austria and Hungary, Schiff’s public condemnation of Hungary’s government and its long-time Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, accusing them of racism, anti-Semitism and neo-fascism, has prevented his return to his native country since 2012. Staying with pianists, one of the world’s currently most highly regarded musicians, Igor Levit, is a familiar face on mainstream Germany TV where he participates in political panel discussions. His humanitarian views are aired on his very popular Twitter account on a daily basis, and he likes to play Beethoven’s Ode to Joy at the annual Green Party conference. Levit also played Beethoven’s Ode at the start of his recital at the opening night of the 2017 Proms in London, as a musical expression of opposition to Brexit. His humanitarian political views, and his direct involvement in politics have taken him to refugee camps and have even attracted death threats. He believes that, although “music has astonishing powers of communication, it cannot be a substitute for calling racism ‘racism’, or calling misogyny ‘misogyny’. It can never be a substitute for being a wakeful, critical, loving, living, and active citizen.” Conductor Daniel Barenboim is somewhat notorious for using the conductor’s podium as a platform for expressing his political views. Also at the 2017 London Proms, after a performance of Elgar’s Symphony No. 2, Barenboim told the audience that "Elgar was a pan-European who would not have supported Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union". He went on to lecture the audience about the dangers of Britain’s “isolationist tendencies”. Then, at the end of this year’s Vienna Philharmonic New Year Concert, in addition to the traditional wishing the audience a happy New Year, Barenboim proceeded to condemn, as so many other musicians and musical organisations have since done, the impending threat (now an all-too-real catastrophe) of a Russian invasion of Ukraine. But Daniel Barenboim’s most constant political activism is directed at Israel’s aggression towards Palestine and the Palestinians. On his website he outlines in detail his opposition to Israel's policies regarding Palestine. As a Jew and an Israeli citizen himself Barenboim is ideally placed to express such views without fear of having those views glibly dismissed as anti-Semitism. At a government ceremony in Tel Aviv, when receiving the 2004 Wolf Prize, his acceptance speech openly criticised Israel’s policies and actions concerning Palestine. As the audience applauded his comments, Israel’s Minister of Education, Limor Livnat, told them to “control yourselves” and condemned Barenboim for using the award ceremony to criticise Israel. The conductor’s efforts to unite Israeli and Arab musicians through his East-West Divan Orchestra is well-known. The Israel-Palestine situation has featured widely in protests by musicians and concert-goers around the world. In 2011 the London Philharmonic Orchestra suspended a group of its players for publicly stating their opposition to the inclusion of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra at that year’s Proms. Their suspension sparked widespread support for their protest from musicians and artists throughout the UK. The Israel Philharmonic has also been at the centre of many other protests, one resulting in the cancellation of its visit to Sydney in 2019. Since the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the music world has reacted emphatically with numerous demonstrations of support for Ukraine and condemnation of Russian musicians who fail to speak out about the actions of their country. In New York, the touring Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra sacked their pro-Putin Russian conductor Valery Gergiev and piano soloist Denis Matsuev, but continued to play their three concerts, including an all-Russian programme, with a different conductor and soloist. The following week, Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducted the cast, chorus, and orchestra of New York’s Metropolitan Opera in a performance of the Ukrainian National Anthem before the opening performance of its new production of Verdi’s Don Carlos, an opera whose very plot centres on the foreign invasion of an independent sovereign country. In the rush to condemn Russia, some went a bit too far. The Cardiff Philharmonic Orchestra in Wales faced a considerable public backlash when it dropped several Tchaikovsky works from a programme in March. As a consequence the orchestra announced that it would be retaining scheduled works by Shostakovich, Prokofiev and Rimsky-Korsakov later in the season. This edition of Troubleshooter includes just a very few of the many examples of politics in music, in music-making, and the music-makers themselves. It demonstrates the naivety and absurdity of any suggestion that politics has no place in music. Music, like all the arts, expresses every aspect of life, from love and betrayal to patriotism and oppression, and every human condition in between; and it will undoubtedly continue to do so as long as it has any purpose at all. Toi Toi Opera Barber – Knoxville Summer of 1915; A Hand of Bridge; Bernstein – Trouble in Tahiti Director: Matthew Kereama Musical Director: Rachel Fuller Singers: Matilda Wickbom – John Bayne – Emma Gilkison – Nigel Withington – Alex Robinson – Katherine Doig – Helen Acheson In February last year, we, the opera stalwarts of Christchurch, headed along to The Great Hall of the Christchurch Arts Centre for the debut production of a new local company – Toi Toi Opera. Billed as Suor Angelica (Puccini) and Elegies (Britten, Butterworth, Vaughan Williams), it rather surprised us with its innovative, thought-provoking and imaginative approach to opera presentation. With its high production values, along with a well-chosen cast and creative team, it projected a considerable emotional and artistic punch. In this new double bill those same qualities abound. The concept emerges, not so much as a double bill, but as an integrated and cleverly matched combination of three American pieces in which Toi Toi’s creative team have played as much a part as the composers and librettists. All three works share a domestic intimacy and a degree of commentary, sometimes overt, sometimes implied, on the elusiveness of the American (human?) dream. Samuel Barber’s 1938 lyric rhapsody Knoxville: Summer of 1915 is one of the great masterpieces of American music and, in Toi Toi’s ingenious realisation and Emma Gilkison’s convincing performance, it proves a logical and effective prologue to the same composer’s ten-minute 1959 opera A Hand of Bridge in which the two couples (Helen Acheson, Nigel Withington, Katherine Doig, Alex Robinson) despairingly and, in the context of theatrical subterfuge, humorously reveal their supressed dreams and desires as they live out their somewhat routine and unfulfilled lives. All five singers in this first part of the programme portray their characters with persuasive commitment and vocal distinction and, while Katherine Doig stands out for her willingness to communicate a more forthright and characterful projection of both voice and character, the others have a tendency to restrain their projection, perhaps as a way of conveying the characters’ repressed aspirations. In particular, in Knoxville, I would have welcomed a more expressive and opulent expansion of the higher, arching phrases from Emma Gilkison, where she has a tendency to pull back. At times her projection and diction are so restrained that the emotional flow of the music loses a degree of its impact. A slightly more fluid tempo might also highlight the dramatic contrasts of the piece, especially in the transition into the magical episode where the singer describes the family lying on quilts on the grass. That same restraint is noticeable in the Greek-chorus-like trio commentary in Bernstein’s 1952 one-act opera Trouble in Tahiti. It’s not just a matter of volume, but of projecting the spirit of the musical and dramatic style of this feature of the score. Bernstein’s writing is full of subtle dynamic swells and falls for this ensemble (Emma Gilkison, Nigel Withington, Alex Robinson), but here everything is subdued and, although it seems to be a deliberate musical decision, it needs just a bit more . . . well . . . oomph! But it’s beautifully sung – the blend of the three voices, intonation, stylistic accord, and physical vitality and coordination are impressive and often very entertaining. The final scene where the trio represents the American dream peering in through the living room windows is particularly effective and dramatically compelling. The two principal singers in this work embrace their roles with total conviction. John Bayne is a suitably self-opinionated Sam who has the requisite vocal and dramatic skills as well as the ideal physical attributes for the part. When dressed as the corporate businessman, Bayne tends to be a little wooden in his portrayal compared to his more liberated and amusing characterisation in the gym changing room. But he is always convincing in his representation of the husband in an increasingly dysfunctional marriage. As his wife Dinah, Matilda Wickbom’s singing and acting makes her character the more sympathetic partner, although she too is not without flaws. Wickbom’s “I was Standing in a Garden” aria is, for me at least, the highlight of the evening – touchingly and beautifully done. And her contrasting “What a Movie” solo demonstrates an ability to find and communicate the diverse vocal and character facets of the part. A superb onstage quintet of instrumentalists, led with vitality by musical director Rachel Fuller, supports the stage performances with pizzazz and subtlety as required, although they too, at times, are a little more subdued in their projection than I would have preferred. Set, lighting and costumes are excellent – appropriate, but with just that inspired element of subtle caricature that highlights the stereotypes represented in the works themselves. Matthew Kereama’s direction ensures that the writers’ intentions are allowed to unfold without any meddlesome intervention, so that the music, acting and overall concept works superbly. Toi Toi is certainly a company to watch – not only talented and professional, but innovative, imaginative and adventurous in a way that will surely develop a growing following as its reputation spreads. |
AuthorTony Ryan has reviewed Christchurch concerts, opera and music theatre productions and many other theatre performances since the mid 1990s. ReviewsTony has presented live and written radio reviews of numerous concerts, opera and other musical events for RNZ Concert for many years. An archive of these reviews can be found at Radio New Zealand - Upbeat
His reviews of opera, music & straight theatre and numerous reviews of buskers and comedy festival performances are available at Theatreview. An archive of Tony’s chamber music reviews is held at Christopher’s Classics He has also reviewed for The Press (Christchurch). Links to Tony's Press reviews are listed below: 2024 Toi Toi Opera - A Christmas Carol Christchurch City Choir - Messiah Christchurc Symphony Orchestra - Mahler Symphony No. 4 Songs for Helen – Music by Chris Adams 2022 A Barber and Bernstein Double Bill – Toi Toi Opera The Strangest of Angels – NZOpera Will King (Baritone) and David Codd (Piano) – Christopher's Classics 2019 Ars Acustica – Free Theatre Truly Madly Baroque – Red Priest The Mousetrap – Lunchbox Theatre Iconoclasts – cLoud Last Night of the Proms – CSO 2018 An Evening with Simon O’Neill NZSO Catch Me If You Can – Blackboard Theatre Brothers in Arms – CSO Fear and Courage – CSO Sin City – CSO Don Giovanni – Narropera at Lansdowne Mad Hatter’s Tea Party – Funatorium Weave – NZTrio Tosca – NZ Opera 2017 Sister Act – Showbiz Broadway to West End – Theatre Royal Chicago – Court Theatre Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 5 – CSO Homage – CSO Last Night of the Proms – CSO SOAR – NZTrio Pianomania – NZSO Rogers & Hammerstein – Showbiz Songs for Nobodies – Ali Harper The Beauty of Baroque – CSO Travels in Italy – NZSO Archives
December 2024
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