Top talent to perform best of Beethoven
is the first national tour of the NZSO’s 2015 season. It will be directed by British piano star Freddy Kempf, who is renowned for his supreme musicianship and dramatically physical performances.
One of the Waikato’s most accomplished musicians, performing with the country’s premier orchestra, will play the best music by arguably the world’s greatest composer in Hamilton on Thursday.
Dr Kirstin Eade is the associate principal flutist in the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra. The group will perform a concert titled Beethoven: The Symphonies in Founders Theatre.
Originally from Hamilton, Eade joined the NZSO in 2003. She completed undergraduate degrees in music and English in New Zealand before moving to the United States. She received a master’s degree from the University of Michigan and a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University in Texas.
Eade has also been a finalist in the TNVZ Young Musician’s Competition, the National Concerto Competition and she won the Rotorua Concerto Competition.
Now teaching flute at the New Zealand School of Music, the former Hamilton Fraser High School student was invited to perform at the American National Flute Convention in 2010 and was the guest artist at the Hamilton Flute Festival the same year.
She performs with the Wellington-based contemporary ensemble, Stroma and is a member of Kontiki Tangle, a celticinfluenced band.
Beethoven: The Symphonies is the first national tour of the NZSO’s 2015 season. It will be directed by British piano star Freddy Kempf, who is renowned for his supreme musicianship and dramatically physical performances.
The tour marks his fourth visit to New Zealand. He last performed with the NZSO in 2012 when he played works by Gershwin, Bernstein and Shostakovich.
Thursday’s audience at Founders Theatre will encounter the Emperor Piano Concerto No 5 - known for its grandeur, bold melodies, and heroic spirit - and the fiery drama of the Third Piano Concerto and the Egmont Overture, all conducted by Kempf.
Waikato fans of the orchestra have more dates to mark in their diaries. The group will return to Founders Theatre on May 21 with a concert called Into the Storm, which will feature works by Benjamin Britten and Jean Sibelius. Then on July 18 it will be Power and Passion, where the music of Franz Liszt and Gustuv Mahler can be heard.
September 25 will feature a show titled Classical Hits which, as the name suggests, will include such well-known pieces as Rossini’s toe-tapping William Tell Overture, Johann Strauss’s stately Blue Danube Waltz, and the galloping blast of Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries.
Finally, on November 7, the orchestra will perform Bold Worlds which incorporates the music of less well-known composers like Jimmy Lopez, Kari Kriikku and Kimmo Hakola.
Thursday’s show starts at 7.30pm. Tickets are available through Ticketek.
Kirstin Eade, associate principal flute in the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, grew up in Hamilton. The orchestra will perform Beethoven: TheSymphonies in Founders Theatre on Thursday.
mike.mather@fairfaxmedia.co.nz