Photo: APO
The Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra celebrated its 40th birthday last week and has just released details of its 2021 season.
Photo: APO
As with all performing arts organisations, 2020 presented the APO with extraordinary challenges – lockdowns, cancellations and postponements included. Border restrictions have meant a change of focus towards locally-based performers and New Zealanders who can return home after completing managed isolation. Fortunately for the APO, Music Director Giordano Bellincampi has been granted essential worker status and will be able to work with the orchestra more closely in 2021.
Upbeat spoke with Giordano Bellincampi and Auckland Philharmonia Chief Executive Barbara Glaser about their 2021 season, which will include the complete cycle of Beethoven Symphonies that was scheduled to be played this year as part of the Beethoven 250 anniversary year, but ended up being cancelled.
As well as the symphonies, Beethoven’s opera Fidelio will be presented in a concert performance – an apt choice given its themes of resistance to suffering, and the remarkable Prisoners’ Chorus where the composer gloriously represents a group of political prisoners stepping out from the darkness of confinement into the light of day.
