Music Federation concerts

Press, 16 April 1986, Page 24

Music Federation concerts

Three of the four Music Federation concerts to come to Christchurch this year feature Australasian artists.

They are New Zealand pianists, Deidre Irons and Michael Houstoun, two ensembles largely Australian, the Academy Piano Trio and the Australian Ensemble, and the Cambridge University Choir.

Christchurch will hear the Academy trio this month, the Australian Ensemble in June, Deidre Irons and Michael Houstoun in October and the Cambridge choir in July. The Academy Piano Trio began life in 1979 as the Mittagong and changed its name last year when its members

took up residence in the Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts. In Christchurch they will play on Wednesday, April 30 three trios, Mozart’s in C K 548, Shostakovich’s in E Minor Op 67 and Tchaikovsky’s in A Minor Op 50.

The Australian Ensemble, too, has been through several metamorphoses. Formed in 1980 on the demise of the Australian Contemporary Music Ensemble and modelled on the same flexible lines as the London Sinfonietta, it has previously been known as the Sydney Virtuosi, the University of New South Wales Ensemble. It avows a commit-

ment to twentieth-century music. They will give five concerts in New Zealand next June.

Their programme should make compelling listening, as it contains Beethoven’s Trio in B flat Op. 11 for clarinet, cello and piano, followed by Nicholas Maw’s Flute Quartet and concludes with Brahms’ Piano Quartet in C minor, Op 60. The Christchurch concert is on June 23.

The Cambridge University Choir aim to present little-known works, sacred and secular, accompanied and a cappella, from medieval to avant-garde, as well as a more conven-

tional repertoire. The choir includes a work K commissioned especially ;• for it by the Music Federation from one of New <’ Zealand’s foremost com- ' ’ posers.

The choir’s concert in Christchurch is on Monday, July 21, in the Town \ Hall Auditorium.

The Deidre Irons- >.l Michael Houstoun com- w bination is on display at the auditorium in the •_ Town Hall on Tuesday, October 14, and will play a wide variety of roman- t ’ n tic and new music. *

Music Federation -- Christchurch is also giving subscribers a chance to j hear the best chamber players from Christchurch’s School of Instrumental Music in a concert j; . in the Great Hall on Saturday, October 4. j