Radio Fiona Rae
The Best of the Week
SATURDAY MARCH 3
The Sound File (RNZ Concert, 1.00pm). RNZ Concert radio programmer David Houston, who has just ushered in a raft of changes, steps up to the microphone in a new series that explores the art of sound. Houston, a former producer of live concerts, has a masters degree in audio recording and can certainly tell a great result from an average one.
SUNDAY MARCH 4
The Sunday Feature (RNZ Concert, 2.00pm). The final episode in Charlotte Wilson’s Art, Life, Music focuses on Dunedin painter Kushana Bush, whose exhibition The Burning Hours has been touring the country and is at the Whangarei Art Museum from March 9. Some of her works are also on display at the contemporary art and design festival NGV Triennial in Melbourne. In her studio, the music ranges from Jack Body to JS Bach.
Opera on Sunday (RNZ Concert, 6.00pm). The Met’s 2018 production of Puccini’s Tosca had a fraught time making it to the stage: a series of departures and the suspension of conductor James Levine over sexual abuse allegations left it scrambling. The Met was also required to return to a traditional production after a disastrous modern staging in 2009. “The stakes could not have been higher,” said the New York Times. Happily, the Met pulled it off with rising stars Sonya Yoncheva and Vittorio Grigolo as the lovers Tosca and Cavaradossi, while stout-hearted Serb Željko Lučić plays the villain Scarpia.
WEDNESDAY MARCH 7
Music Alive (RNZ Concert, 7.30pm). The Romanesque Summer festival in Cologne takes advantage of the city’s beautiful 11th-century Romanesque churches, and tonight’s concert was staged in the largest of the 12, St Mary’s in the Capitol. Serbian twin brothers Ratko and Radiša Teofilović perform ancient Balkan folk songs; a newly arranged Gregorian chant is premiered; and a new piece by German composer Wolfgang Rihm is performed.