Orchestra Wellington’s 2014 Season: Bigger and Better

Orchestra Wellington’s 2014 Season: Bigger and Better

[embargoed until Monday 18th November]

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Orchestra Wellington is expanding its 2014 season to include five subscription concerts instead of four, and extending its family concerts to bring more performances to more venues. The orchestra is also resuming its touring activities, taking subscription concerts to New Plymouth, Masterton, Kapiti and Wanganui.

The increased concert activity is possible thanks to the support of the Wellington City Council and Regional Council, music director Marc Taddei says.

“Our number one aim is to inspire, enthuse and enrich our community and we are grateful for all of the fulsome support we receive,” Taddei says.

Taddei says the 2014 season is built around two strands: great Romantic song cycles, and the outstanding works Haydn created in the 1780s known as the Paris symphonies. As well as these themes, two particular highlights to open and close the season are Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony, performed as part of the Anglican Cathedral’s 50th anniversary celebrations, and the awesome Carmina Burana, Taddei says.

The season has a distinct Viennese flavour, he says. “We are delighted to present some of the greatest masterpieces from this, classical music's most important city. In addition to Haydn, of the composers who lived and worked in Vienna, we’re featuring Mozart, Mahler and Bruckner.”

New Zealand, which has produced singers like Kiri Te Kanawa and Donald McIntyre, continues to create wonderful opera singers. “Orchestra Wellington has a proud history of identifying and presenting the finest young singing talent that this country has produced.”

Baritone Kieran Rayner and mezzo soprano Bianca Andrew will appear in two Mahler song cycles, Songs of a Wayfarer and Kindertotenlieder. The orchestra will also introduce Wellington audiences to one of Australia’s leading Wagnerian mezzo-sopranos, Deborah Humble, to sing Wagner’s great love poem, the Wesendonck Lieder.

Singers feature in the grand work that closes the season, Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana. The dramatic oratorio calls on longtime Orchestra Wellington partners the Orpheus Choir as well as Wellington Young Voices and soloists Emma Fraser, Oliver Sewell and James Clayton.

This year’s composer in residence is David Downes, and Taddei says he is excited about the multi-media work Downes will create for Orchestra Wellington’s final concert of the year. “Orchestra Wellington has been hugely fortunate in the works that we have commissioned as a result of our numerous composers in residence schemes, and David's new work will add considerable lustre to the body of work that has been created for Orchestra Wellington.”

In 1786 the Count d’Ogny, a wealthy Parisian music lover, commissioned Joseph Haydn to write six symphonies for Paris’ leading orchestra. Haydn responded enthusiastically for this large and wealthy ensemble that could count the nobility among its ranks and Marie Antoinette among its listeners. The composer Luigi Cherubini, then a violinist for the orchestra, recorded how the players received each new Haydn symphony “with rapture”. As for the audiences, they went wild for the Paris symphonies. Orchestra Wellington will share these marvels of symphonic structure with its audiences throughout 2014. “We will perform these extraordinary works with an historically informed approach,” Taddei says. “Athough I doubt we will dress  the orchestra musicans in sky blue dress coats with lace ruffles and swords at their sides as they did at the premieres!”

Jian Liu is the newest Lecturer in Piano at the New Zealand School of Music. He has appeared on concert stages in China, Japan, Singapore, Portugal, Switzerland, Ukraine, the United States and New Zealand, and with symphony orchestras in Europe and USA. For the past two years, New Zealand audiences have been enjoying the blistering excitement and technical audacity of his chamber music recitals. Orchestra Wellington is delighted to welcome him as their soloist for Ravel’s G minor Piano Concerto.

Orchestra Wellington’s family concerts will delight audiences all over the city. Their expanded family programme begins in January with an outdoor concert in the Botanic Gardens Soundshell as part of the Wellington City’s Summer City Gardens Magic festival. That’s followed in February by a reprise of “Baby Pops: Back to the Farm” presented as part of the Fringe Festival in two new venues: Scots College in Strathmore and Sacred Heart College in Lower Hutt. Orchestra Wellington Education Composer in Residence Thomas Goss has another Baby Pops concert up his sleeve for November: Anchors Aweigh, a pirate-themed orchestral adventure for young listeners. In July, the orchestra will present a family concert in the opera house featuring two more works by Goss: Tane and the Kiwi, and a colourful treatment of a favourite New Zealand story, and Pita and the Wolf, which retells Prokofiev’s classic story with a Pasifika twist. The programme is filled out with a musical version of Dr Seuss’ Gerald McBoingBoing.

The orchestra’s busy schedule is filled out with partnership performances including Don Giovanni and La Traviata with New Zealand Opera, Coppelia and A Christmas Carol with the RNZ Ballet, a performance of Faure’s Requiem with Voices New Zealand Chamber Choir, and an appearance at Nelson’s Opera in the Park.

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SUBSCRIPTION CONCERTS

SUBS1: The Angel

Saturday May 24
7pm, Wellington Cathedral

Haydn Symphony No.84, E-flat major ‘In nomine Domini’
Wagner Wesendonck Lieder
Bruckner Symphony No.7

Deborah Humble, mezzo soprano

SUBS2: What Love Tells Me

Masterton: Friday June 20
7pm Masterton Town Hall

Kapiti: Saturday June 21
6pm Southwards Car Museum

Wellington: Sunday June 22
4pm, Opera House

Haydn Symphony No.82, C major ‘The Bear’
Mahler arr. Leeuw Kindertotenlieder
Mozart Symphony No. 40, K.550, G minor

Bianca Andrew, mezzo soprano

SUBS 3: Song of the Nightingale

Saturday August 9
7:30pm, Michael Fowler Centre

Haydn Symphony No. 83 in G minor, ‘The Hen’
Ravel Piano Concerto in G
Stravinsky Song of the Nightingale
Rimsky-Korsakov The Golden Cockerel

Jian Liu, Piano

SUBS 4: Songs of a Wayfarer

New Plymouth: Friday September 5
7pm, TSB Showplace

Wanganui: Saturday September 6
6pm Wanganui Opera House

Wellington: Sunday September 7
4pm Wellington Opera House

Haydn Symphony No.85, Bb major “The Queen”
Schnittke Moz-Art à la Haydn
Mahler arr Schoenberg Songs of a Wayfarer
Haydn Symphony No 86, D major

Kieran Rayner, baritone.

SUBS 5: Carmina Burana

Saturday, November 15
7:30pm, Michael Fowler Centre

Haydn Symphony No.87, A major
Downes Commissioned work
Orff Carmina Burana

Emma Fraser, Soprano
Oliver Sewell, Tenor
James Clayton, Baritone

The Orpheus Choir with Wellington Young Voices boys choir.

FAMILY CONCERTS

Summer City Gardens Magic – FREE
Sunday 26 January
8pm, The Soundshell, Wellington Botanic Gardens

Baby Pops – Back to the Farm
New Zealand Fringe Festival

Saturday 15 February, 3pm, Notre Dame des Missions Performing Arts Centre, Sacred Heart College, Lower Hutt

Sunday 16 Febuary, 3pm Scots College Hall, Strathmore, Wellington

Family Concert 2014
Sunday 27 July
3pm, Opera House

Baby Pops: Anchors Aweigh!
Sunday 23 November
3pm, Michael Fowler Centre

PERFORMANCE PARTNERS

Nelson Opera in the Park
Saturday 22 February
7.30pm Trafalgar Park, Nelson

Royal New Zealand Ballet season of Coppelia
Léo Delibes
Conducted by Nigel Gaynor
St James Theatre
April 17-26

Choirs Aotearoa: Fauré Requiem by Candlelight
Voices New Zealand Chamber Choir
Conducted by Karen Grylls
Saturday June 7
7:30pm Wellington Cathedral of St Paul

NZ Opera Season: La Traviata
Giuseppe Verdi
Conducted by Guido Ajmone-Marsan
July 11- 19
St James Theatre

NZ Opera Season: Don Giovanni
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Conducted by Wynn Davies
October 11-18
St James Theatre

Royal NZ Ballet Season of A Christmas Carol
Carl Davis
Conducted by Nigel Gaynor
October 30 – November 8
St James Theatre

ENDS

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