Music Alive features the Swedish mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter’s Auckland recital recorded when she visited New Zealand late last year with her Swedish pianist Bengt Forsberg. The programme includes songs by Stenhammer, Sibelius, Schubert, Liszt, Grainger, Korngold, Weill, Andersson, and Grieg. This was von Otter’s first visit to New Zealand. Before she arrived, The Listener’s Rod Biss spoke to her by phone from Stockholm.

“Well, I couldn’t wait any longer. I’ve kept putting it off. I had wanted to bring my children when they were young – but now they’re adults and don’t want to come, so finally I decided that I’m just going to go.”

Promoter Roger King, who masterminded the visit, heard from a colleague in Australia that Sydney Opera House was bringing her out for its recital series in the Utzon Room and he got on the phone to von Otter’s management to see if there was any chance of her coming on to New Zealand as well. It turned out she had a week between then and her next stop, San Francisco. “And so,” von Otter says, “I’m finally on my way!”

It was when von Otter started singing in the choir at school that she discovered “singing Bach motets and Bach oratorios was absolutely divine – I learnt a lot from doing that”. In 1981, she went to London to study at the Guildhall School of Music with Vera Rózsa. “She was terribly important to me. The way she wanted to hear me sing – and I think Kiri as well – was with a lot of head voice [and] not to sing too heavily.” Rózsa told her what she should be singing – roles such as Cherubino in Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro and Octavian in Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier. She wanted her to do competitions, and pushed her to find an agent.

“All very sound and good advice.” (Source: Rod Biss / The Listener)

This concert was recorded live in the Auckland Concert Chamber by Radio New Zealand

This concert recorded in Wellington’s St Andrews on the Terrace comes from the Contemporary Music Ensemble, Korea who first came to international attention when they performed at the Berlin World Culture Centre in 1998.

They started out that year with just four musicians playing the daegeum, gayageum, guitar and saenghwang. Shortly afterwards five new musicians joined the group playing cello, clarinet, piri and Korean and Western percussion instruments.

The Ensemble has created a new kind of Korean music, motivated by the belief in traditional music’s relevance to the present and through the co-operation of traditional Korean music specialists and Western classical instrumentalists.

They have brought together Korean composers with other composers from all over the world. This co-operative approach has resulted in the première of many new compositions, some of which have presented joint concerts with groups like Germany’s Isang Yun Ensemble and Kammerensemble Neue Musik Berlin and American ensembles New Music Works and City Winds.

(Source: Programme Notes)

This concert was recorded live in St Andrews on the Terrace by Radio New Zealand

Samuel West, Robin McLeavy (actors), Australian Chamber Orchestra, Janácek (arr Tognetti), Beethoven (arr Tognetti)

Named after Beethoven's Kreutzer Sonata, the novella was published in 1889 and promptly censored by the Russian authorities. It’s an argument for the ideal of sexual abstinence and an in-depth first-person description of jealous rage.

The main character, Pozdnyshev murders his wife and the man he suspects her having an affair with. In his analysis, the root cause for the deed were the "animal excesses" and "swinish connection" governing the relation between the sexes.

The script for tonight’s performance starring Samuel West (son of leading British actor Timothy West)  and Robin McLeavy was  written by Laura Wade and portrays two versions of the Tolstoy story accompanied by arrangements of the original Kreutzer Sonata  by Beethoven and a later version by Leos Janácek”s String Quartet.

These have, in turn, been arranged for this performance by the Australian Chamber Orchestra’s Richard Tognetti.

(Source: ABC)

This concert was recorded live in the Adelaide Town Hall by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Three programmes

(1) John Chen (piano), Dimitri Atanassov (violin), Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Jayce Ogrens

This week we’re broadcasting the first of three concerts recorded last year in the Auckland Town Hall  “The Splendour Series, Inspired by Bach” performed by the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra. Included in the programme are two of Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos (Nos 3 & 6), Schnittke’s Concerto Grosso No 6 with John Chen (piano) and Dimitri Atanassov (violin) and Béla Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra.

This concert was recorded live in the Auckland Town Hall by Radio New Zealand

Recorded in the Auckland Town Hall

This concert from the NZTrio recorded in the Auckland Town Hall includes Piano Trio by Higdon, So Many Rivers by Bailey, Piano Trio No 1 by Turina, Schumann’s Piano Trio No 2 and The Year Without a Summer by Stuart Greenbaum. Greenbaum based his composition on the eruption of Mt Tambora on the island of Sumatra which he says was four times as big as the eruption of Krakatoa, later that century, but not as well known.

“The ash and dust thrown up into the earth’s upper atmosphere further resulted in ‘the year without a summer’ in 1816. This was by all accounts a devastating ecological event that caused unseasonal cold temperatures and widespread famine.

“The first movement is short and fast. It imagines a dark cloud of dust approaching from the distance, not knowing where it came from. Did it seem a premonition? How long did they think it would last? The longer second movement shifts forward to 1816 and contemplates the upheaval of people’s lives – of having their world turned upside down in one way or another and having to regroup and adjust to new circumstances.”

Violinist Justine Cormack, cellist Ashley Brown and pianist Sarah Watkins first joined forces in 2002 and were Ensemble in Residence at The University of Auckland from 2004-2009. Recent highlights have included an exciting collaborative performance with Finnish bass/accordion duo Lepisto & Lehti at the WOMAD festival in New Plymouth, the première of a joint composition by Gareth Farr and Richard Nunns for piano trio and taonga puoro (traditional Maori instruments), a new commission by composer/filmmaker David Downes at the New Zealand International Arts Festival and a series of performances at the Shanghai World Expo in July.

(Source: Chamber Music New Zealand)

This concert was recorded in the Auckland Town Hall by Radio New Zealand