DSO: journeys

Dunedin Symphony Orchestra at Dunedin Town Hall.

Join us on a journey with Principal Guest Conductor James Judd and our three distinguished soloists to other times and places through the magic of four orchestral masterpieces.

To celebrate Matariki as part of the Puaka Matariki Festival in Otepoti Dunedin, we open with Rerenga in which the soundscapes of the worlds of Captain Cook and Maori, the sea and nature are melded, becoming a new soundscape in which they are no longer individually distinguishable.

With Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 5, we not only travel to eighteenth-century Austria, but also enjoy an interlude which evokes Turkish culture which was fashionable at that time.

Reaching into Germany’s past is Mahler’s Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Boy’s Magic Horn). The text’s German folk poems reflect on nature, love, life and death.

Finally, in Sibelius’s Seventh Symphony, his last, we experience music of ‘unearthly beauty’ and ‘transcendent peacefulness’. This one-movement work represents the culmination of his symphonic writing, with his distinctive brooding harmonies and powerful brass, and it finishes with a peaceful resolution.