Bookings heavy for symphony concerts

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34105, 18 March 1976, Page 19

Bookings heavy for symphony concerts

The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra concerts for the rest of the week promise to be the most popular Arts Festival events. The four concerts are expected to open with full houses. Last evening’s concert was booked out. They draw together under the baton of one of Britain’s foremost conductors, Sir Charles Groves, the festival’s five celebrated overseas artists and the country's top soloists and players. The first concert last evening — the all-Beethoven — had as its instrumental soloists, the chamber music virtuosi Frankl. Pauk and Kirshbaum. Today and tomorrow the American pia-1 nist Michael Ponti, whose] repertoire will almost cer-i tainly never be heard again] in New Zealand, will play, and in the final concert on! Saturday the Polish violinist,: Wanda Wilkomirska, will be the soloist. The four vocal soloists travelling with the orchestra are Beverley Bergen, of Dunedin, whose singing career spreads in the course of the average year through Europe, Australia, and NewZealand, the Auckland tenor, Anthony Benfell. the soprano, Emily Mair, and, Lauris Elms.

in Thursday’s concert lEmily Mair will sing a work, I for soprano and eight cellos, i— the Bachianas Brasileirasl No 5. Wilfred Sintenauer I will play all eight cello parts. Beverley Bergen, Lauris Elms, and Anthony Benfell will take the solo parts in Benjamin Brittens "Spring Symphony,” with the Christchurch Harmonic Society and the St Andrew's College Treble Choir. The symphony will be played for the first rime in New Zealand at the festival's closing concert on iSaturday. I The celebrated work w»as

written when Britten was 36 and approaching the height of his powers as a com poser. Although it has the traditional four movements of the symphony, it is more a cycle of songs and choral movements. It uses 12 poems, hv. among others, Edmund Spenser, Milton, Herrick Blake, and Auden, spanning the thirteenth to the twentieth centuries, and traces the seasonal exile from winter to summer The music is said to be full of unusual musical coin binations, and to use unusual instruments. Al the Saturday festival concert. Wanda Wilkomirska will play Szymanowski's xiolin concerto.