ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT CONDUCTOR’S IST CHCH. CONCERT

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30541, 9 September 1964, Page 10

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT CONDUCTOR’S IST CHCH. CONCERT

Juan Matteucci will make his Christchurch debut with the N.Z.B.C. SymphonyOrchestra this month. He will conduct two concerts in the Civic Theatre, one on Thursday, September 24, and one on Saturday, September 26.

Born in Italy, but having spent most of his. life in Chile, Juan Matteucci brings a cosmopolitan background of musicianship to this country. For nine years he was resident conductor of the Chile Philharmonic Orchestra in Santiago and appeared • as guest conductor in other parts of South America and in the United States. Under Matteucci the Phil-i harmonic of Chile gained a! reputation as one of the best I orchestras in South America. Matteucci was selected for the post of resident conductor of the N.Z.B.C. Symphony from more than 100 applicants. Small, and lively in his movements, Mr Matteucci has

a quick wit and a warm personality. His conducting is characterised by firm and sensitive control without flamboyance or extravagance of gesture. He likes all music that is sincere and has universality, having no preference for any particular composer or period. Although contemporary music is difficult to judge, Juan Matteucci likes it “because we cannot stand still.” Two Soloists Two major international artists will appear with the orchestra in its Christchurch concerts, the French baritone, Gerard Souzay, and the Cuban - American pianist, Jorge Bolet The first concert will start with Rossini’s Overture, “The Thieving Magpie.” The overture was received enthusiastically by. the Milan audience at the opera’s premiere in 1817 and has been a favourite ever since. The Mozart arias that Gerard Souzay will then sing show the composer in a diversity of moods. Souzay will start with the gay melody of the entrance of Papageno

the birdcatcher in the “Magic Flute” and the romantic Serenata from Act 2 of “Don Giovanni.” The soloist will finish the Mozart bracket with the aria from the “Marriage of Figaro” in which the Count vents his rage at being

thwarted in his desire for Figaro’s betrothed, Susanna. The orchestra will then play Symphony No. 102 by Haydn, a work that typifies Haydn’s orchestral writing at its peak. Souzay will return to sing Ravel’s Two Hebrew Melo-

dies. Composed in 1914, these songs were based on traditional Hebraic themes, one a devout prayer, the other light-hearted and whimsical. The concert will end with the Iberia Suite, which was originally written by Isaac Albeniz and presented in 1909 as a series of 12 piano

pieces reflecting life in different parts of Spain. Enrique Arbos, a gifted Spanish violinist, who later conducted the Madrid Symphony Orchestra, arranged five of the pieces for orchestra. Brahms Concerto The second concert will open with Corelli’s Suite for Strings. Corelli, himself a violinist, was one of the first great exponents of composition for string instruments, particularly the violin. His writings in seventeenth-cen-tury Italy influenced such later musicians as Tartini, Bach and Handel. Bolet will then appear as soloist in Brahms’s First Piano Concerto. First performed in Hanover in 1859 with Brahms himself at the piano, the D minor Piano Concerto, though an early work, is a magnificent example of Brahms’s style of piano writing. The concert ends with Tchaikovsky’s sixth symphony, the “Pathetique.” To posterity the name Pathetique has a significance beyond the melancholy of the music, because a .few days after its first performance in St. Petersburg, Tchaikovsky died suddenly of cholera.