72 | Radio
The Best of the Week
SUNDAY AUGUST 6
The Sunday Feature (RNZ National, 4.06pm). Helen Clark – where is she now? Perhaps Gill Greer ( Shelf Life, page 30) can tell us in this conversation recorded at Te Papa last month. Greer is about to retire from her role as the CEO of Volunteer Service Abroad and is well set to discuss Positive Action in a Volatile World with the former Administrator of the UN Development
Programme.
Opera on Sunday (RNZ
Concert, 6.00pm). The 2017
BBC Proms featured a number of themed concerts to mark the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, and although Beethoven’s only opera, Fidelio, does not directly relate to that event, it falls into the same category of protest against oppression. The story of political prisoner Florestan and his resourceful wife, Leonore, was first performed in the wake of the French Revolution. In this performance in the Royal Albert Hall, Australian tenor Stuart Skelton is Florestan, Ricarda Merbeth Leonore and Louise Alder the jailer’s daughter Marzelline.
TUESDAY AUGUST 8
Music Alive (RNZ Concert, 7.00pm). Virtuoso violinist Nicola Benedetti is the star of this BBC Prom; with Thomas Søndergård and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, she performs Shostakovich’s technically demanding Violin Concerto No 1. Under the Danish conductor, the orchestra continue their exploration of Shostakovich and Sibelius, with the former’s tone poem October and the latter’s Symphony No 2. In Wednesday’s Prom, the Brits take on the Germans: the Aurora Orchestra, conducted by Nicholas Collon, perform Beethoven’s famous Eroica symphony, as well as Richard Strauss’s Metamorphosen ( Music Alive, 7.00pm).
THURSDAY AUGUST 10
Music Alive (RNZ Concert, 8.00pm). Tonight’s live broadcast is APO concert The New World, featuring two popular symphonic postcards: Vltava, in which Smetana follows the longest river in the Czech Republic and, of course, Dvorák’s From the New World, the work he wrote while living in New York. First up, however, APO principal percussionist Eric Renick will step into the spotlight with Einojuhani Rautavaara’s Incantations, which features marimba, vibraphone and other percussion instruments and was inspired by tales of shamans weaving their enchantments.