Opus Orchestra - Song of The Earth

Music Director Peter Walls and Opus Orchestra present ‘Song of the Earth’ featuring international tour de force Simon O’Neill, and also presenting a very special commissioned work by Ross Harris.

This programme began with a suggestion from Simon O’Neill (who performed with Opus Orchestra in December 2016) to perform Iain Farrington’s brilliant reduced orchestration of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde.

Ross Harris’s Vienna (Mahler) works with material from Mahler’s Symphony No. 7. It forms part of a suite commissioned by Peter and Kathryn Walls for the NZSO’s 2010 European tour. The other movements allude in a similar way to Wagner (who wrote his Ring Cycle in Lucerne) and Schumann. Ross is creating a special version of this Suite especially for Opus Orchestra.

Symphony No. 35 in D, K.385 (‘Haffner’) Mozart
Lucerne (Wagner) Ross Harris
Das Lied von der Erde arr. Iain Farrington Gustav Mahler