| Radio Fiona Rae
The Best of the Week
SUNDAY APRIL 29
Opera on Sunday (RNZ Concert, 6.00pm). Metropolitan Opera audiences enjoyed another lavish Franco Zeffirelli production earlier this month, this time Puccini’s final opera Turandot. Renowned Turandot interpreter Martina Serafin is in the lead, while Chinese soprano Guanqun Yu is Liu and Argentinian tenor Marcelo Álvarez is Prince Calaf.
MONDAY APRIL 30
Music Alive (RNZ Concert, 7.30pm). American twins Christina and Michelle Naughton perform almost as one person in this concert recorded at the Michael Fowler Centre in early April. The sisters, who were on a four-date tour of New Zealand, play Mozart’s Concerto in E flat for two pianos, a piece written by Mozart to perform with his sister Maria Anna. They were “just fabulous”, said reviewer Fiona McCabe. “They totally owned the piano technically.” The NZSO also perform Mahler’s Symphony No 5.
WEDNESDAY MAY 2
Music Alive (RNZ Concert, 7.30pm). British a cappella group Voces8 are captured in one of two churches built in the grand Ludwigsburg Palace in this concert from the Ludwigsburg Festival. The 18th-century palace is known as the “Versailles of Swabia” and has hosted the festival since 1932. The versatile vocal group perform works by William Byrd, Felix Mendelssohn, Benjamin Britten, JS Bach and others, as well as folk songs.
THURSDAY MAY 3
Music Alive (RNZ concert, 7.30pm). Australian composer Brett Dean conducted his own work at this Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra concert, the powerful one-movement piece Fire Music inspired by the deadly Australian bush fires of 2009. The effect of the instruments that were stationed around the Auckland Town Hall to give the impression of surrounding fire may be lost, however. Dean’s compatriot, Piers Lane, is also on hand for Brahms’s Piano Concerto No 2 and the orchestra begins with Sibelius’s haunting Scene with Cranes.