Powerful musical pairing joins the NZSO for Liszt and Mahler

Powerful musical pairing joins the NZSO for Liszt and Mahler

The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra welcomes the return of superstar Russian conductor, Vasily Petrenko, and remarkable Macedonian piano soloist Simon Trpčeski as they reunite once again.

Performing together again after a series of exceptional collaborations beginning at the BBC Proms in 2010, this dynamic duo will bring emotion and passion to Liszt’s Piano Concerto No.2.

Lauded for his elegant and assured playing, award-winning pianist Simon Trpčeski delighted audiences with Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in C Minor at the Proms. Conducted by Vasily Petrenko, London’sMusic OMH described his performance as “monumental”:

[Trpčeski] delivered a monumental performance of this hugely popular work. Tempestuous in the first movement, reflective and pensive in the second and coping brilliantly with the fiendishly difficult writing in the last movement, his was a towering interpretation.
Keith McDonnell, www.musicomh.com, 2010.

The pair have recorded a number of commercial discs together - the most recent, featuring Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concertos 1 & 2 recorded in 2014, has been a significant success. Critics have described the recording as “vibrant” and “exhilarating”.

Simon Trpčeski is set to dazzle with the NZSO for the third time. His last New Zealand performance was labelled as “virtuosic,” and “faultless”.

Simon Trpčeski is a born showman, gazing over the audience during rare snatches of respite in Prokofiev’s Third Piano Concerto. With no technical problems to worry about, his passagework was a gleaming marvel. William Dart, New Zealand Herald, 2011.

This time he will bring his precision and brilliance to Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 2, a composer who was often lauded as the greatest pianist of his time. Mysterious and melodic, the beauty of this concerto lies in the relationship between piano and orchestra.

Renowned for his passion and intensity, there is no better conductor than Vasily Petrenko for Mahler’s epic Fifth Symphony. He conducted the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra for the first time in 2004 and the following year he was named the RLPO’s Principal Conductor from 2006. Now Chief Conductor of the RLPO and the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra, Petrenko has performed with some of the greatest orchestras in the world. He returns to conduct the NZSO for the first time since his critically acclaimed Leningrad tour, which received standing ovations across the country.
What no-one would question, I suggest, is the quality of the young Russian conductor. With a superb technique, a control over dynamics that is breathtaking, he missed no tricks.
John Button, The Dominion Post, 2011.

Gustav Mahler’s Fifth Symphony is the pinnacle of emotion and power. Composed in the summers of 1901 and 1902, Mahler described the piece to be, “a completely new style”. Leonard Bernstein notably said:

[Mahler’s] marches are like heart attacks, his chorales like all Christendom gone mad.

The symphony is a gut wrenching juxtaposition: tragedy and anger give way to jubilation, which then falls away to anxiety, tension competes with repose and, finally, despair transforms to love and pure joy.

Join your national orchestra for a musical match made in heaven as this talented twosome, Simon Trpčeski and Vasily Petrenko, bring emotion, intensity, and exhilaration to the concert hall.

Experience Power and Passion, in association with ANZ Private.

ENDS

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