Radio
The Best of the Week
SUNDAY APRIL 30
Opera on Sunday (RNZ Concert, 6.00pm). As the Metropolitan Opera’s music director emeritus, conductor James Levine has lately been selective in his projects, but as he was behind the Met’s first production in 1982 of Mozart’s Idomeneo, starring Luciano Pavarotti, he returned for this year’s production. It was a high point of the season, said the New York Times, noting that American tenor Matthew Polenzani gave a “poignant, gripping performance” as the King of Crete.
TUESDAY MAY 2
Music Alive (RNZ Concert, 7.00pm). A concert to mark the 500th anniversary of the Reformation that features works by Luther, JS Bach, Brahms, Mendelssohn and Vaughan Williams. The Choir of Clare College, Cambridge, were recorded in St John’s Smith Square, London.
WEDNESDAY MAY 3
Music Alive (RNZ Concert, 8.00pm). A recently discovered work by Igor Stravinsky will open this live broadcast from the Auckland Town Hall: the APO perform the Australasian premiere of Funeral Song, a 12-minute piece written for Stravinsky’s teacher Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. It came to light when the St Petersburg Conservatoire moved house and it was performed for the first time since 1909 in December.
The concert, a celebration of “Russian passion”, also features Tchaikovsky’s emotional Fourth Symphony and Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No 4, played by British pianist Kathryn Stott. Guest conductor Rumon Gamba is at the helm. Russia is also on William Dart’s mind this Saturday: in Sergei Rachmaninov: A Personal Journey (RNZ Concert, 1.00pm), Dart begins with the observation that Rachmaninov’s melodies have been fodder for pop songs.
FRIDAY MAY 5
Music Alive (RNZ Concert, 7.00pm). New and interesting works feature in this concert from the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra, in particular, the world premiere of Concerto for Taonga Puoro, composed by Phil Brownlee and performed by Ariana Tikao. In addition, Lissa Meridan’s A Quiet Fury, a composition for orchestra and live electronics, includes her field recordings of Paris street noise. The evening ends with Béla Bartók’s relatively traditional The Miraculous Mandarin.