Vector Wellington Orchestra "Pulse"

Jack Body – Pulse
Beethoven – Piano Concerto No 1 in C, Op 15
Janacek – Sinfonietta

Marc Taddei – Conductor
Michael Houstoun – Piano
Central Band of the Royal New Zealand Air Force

“Whatever Houstoun plays is superb, but to hear him in Beethoven is to hear him at his best.” (Christchurch Star)

On April 18, the Vector Wellington Orchestra makes a vigorous start to a concert season packed full of the best that classical music has to offer in the capital. Under the baton of charismatic music director Marc Taddei, the VWO is joined by pianist Michael Houstoun and the Central Band of the Royal New Zealand Air Force.

Audiences through time know what they want to hear. Beethoven was called the greatest pianist who ever lived when he wrote his first piano concerto. Michael Houstoun, who performs it with Vector Wellington Orchestra on April 18, says that even his early concertos contain all the elements that make Beethoven a great - perhaps the greatest - composer. “He speaks to us with his vigorous, noble and beautiful voice and calls on his interpreters to stretch themselves so as to embrace and reveal his tremendous power,” Houstoun says.

Houstoun will perform all the Beethoven piano concertos in 2009, one for each of the Vector Wellington Orchestra’s five subscription concerts. They promise to be, like his complete recordings of all the Beethoven piano sonatas a few years back, a landmark in New Zealand music.

The orchestra’s first subscription concert opens with “Pulse”, a Jack Body work inspired by Papua New Guinean fire dancers. “It shows the power of pulse,” Body says. “It’s something so elemental – yet sometimes primitive music can be very sophisticated.” Written at a time when Body was exploring links between primitive and Western art forms, it takes the stomping rhythms of masked and plumed dancers that so excited him and relates it to motifs by Beethoven, Berlioz and Stravinsky.

The VWO combines with another Wellington musical powerhouse, the Central Band of the RNZAF, to play Janacek’s “Sinfonietta”, a gloriously brassy fantasia. The Town Hall rafters will ring as stirring martial fanfares rub shoulders with heel-kicking peasant dance rhythms and sweetly nostalgic Bohemian melodies.

This is a fine example of the innovative programming we have come to expect from Marc Taddei, Music Director of Vector Wellington Orchestra.

Free pre-concert talk in the Wellington Town Hall 7pm

Book at Ticketek 0800 842 538 www.ticketek.co.nz
Service fee will apply
For Kaptiti Bus bookings call 04 801 3882

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