The Best of the Week
SATURDAY DECEMBER 14
Music Alive (RNZ Concert, 7.30) After performing Handel’s Messiah regularly in its early years, the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra didn’t play it at all between 1975 and 2012. Now, with another performance this month, it’s looking like a Christmas staple again. This recording is from the 2018 performance with Nicholas McGegan conducting.
MONDAY DECEMBER 16
Music Alive (RNZ Concert, 8.00pm). As the doyen of classical reviewers, William Dart, put it, no one who came to the gala concert at the
Aotea Centre last month was turning up for unexpected or challenging fare. The evening of well-known arias and choruses was all about the guest of honour, Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, who had flown from her home in Britain to celebrate the renaming of what was, until that night, the ASB Theatre. The room’s longtime sponsor, ASB Bank, gifted its naming rights to Dame Kiri and although she didn’t sing, she did take the stage – and, unexpectedly, danced a little flamenco. The performances from the first night at the Kiri Te Kanawa Theatre have been captured by RNZ and feature Anna Leese (soprano), Pene Pati (tenor), James Ioelu (bassbaritone), the New Zealand Opera Chorus and Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Giordano Bellincampi. At the end of an affectionate evening of opera, Dart wrote, “an encore of Libiamo from La Traviata, fuelled by an effervescent Auckland Philharmonia … closed the evening appropriately in party spirits”.