Orchestra on the off-beat trail

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33777, 25 February 1975, Page 15

Orchestra on the off-beat trail

The concerts planned for this year by William Southgate, new conductor of the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra, include several littleknown works by little-known composers. His plans also include new effects, using sections of the orchestra and smaller groups. Five of the nine concerts will be subscription • concerts. Each concert will be preceded by two weeks of rehearsals, both of sections and the full orchestra — about eight three-hour rehearsals. The first subscription concert is planned for May 4 in the Town Hall auditorium. It will comprise three works, Weber’s Freischutz Overture, a Mozart violin concerto, and Beethoven’s sixth Symphony. The second subscription concert, in the auditorium on July 5, will feature

Verdi’s Overture Nabucco, Sibelius’s En Saga, and Vaughan Williams’s, Fifth Symphony. The Christchurch Cathedral is the likely venue of a string concert on July 19. Mr Southgate will conduct Vivaldi’s Concerto Grosso, Stravinsky’s Apollo Musagetes, and Bach's Third Brandenberg Concerto. The James Hay Theatre will be the venue on August 3 for Rameau’s Les Indes Galants, Webern’s Concerto, Stravinsky’s Dances Concertantes, and R. Strauss’s “Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme” Suite.

Haydn’s Symphony No. 88, Bartok’s “Hungarian Pictures," and Schuberts Sixth Symphony will be featured in the third subscription concert in the Town Hall on August 16. An open concert on September 6, again in the auditorium will feature the works of Mozart and one of Mr Southgate’s own compositions. On October 11, in the fourth subscription concert

in the auditorium, there will be a performance of Prokofiev’s Lt Kije Suite, Berlioz’s Nuits d’ete, and Tchaikovsky’s Second Symphony. For the November 1 concert a bigger orchestra than the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra will be required, and players will be seconded, some from the Dunedin Symphony Orchestra. The enlarged orchestra will play Berlioz’s Benevenuto Cellini Overture, Elgar’s Cello Concerto, and Wagner’s Dawn, Rhine Journey, and Funeral Procession. This will be the last subscription . concert, of the year. The final concert of the year, on November 23, will be in the James Hay Theatre, and will be by wind and percussion only. It will feature Stravinsky’s Symphony for Wind In- . struments, Chavez’s Toccata for Percussion, and Varese’s Deserts. A programme of dance music, including the works of seven composers, has been withdrawn from the orogramme.