NZ Symphony Orchestra - Town & Country

The country and the city come together in this programme paying homage to two very different landscapes. Douglas Lilburn, the grandfather of New Zealand classical music, wrote his Drysdale Overture while still a young man studying at London’s Royal College of Music. The Overture nostalgically portrays the pastoral landscape of his family’s farm in the Turakina Valley.

English composer Frederick Delius’ Walk to the Paradise Garden, from his opera A Village Romeo and Juliet, is a dreamily romantic interlude, featuring the woodwind section at their most expressive. Malcolm Arnold’s English Dances, meanwhile, gathers the best of English country folk dances into a charming and colourful suite of toe-tapping tunes.

Then NZ composer Maria Grenfell sweeps us into the city with her jubilant Fanfare for a City, while Aaron Copland’s beautiful film score for Our Town is a nostalgic view of small-town life in Grover’s Corner, New Hampshire. Leonard Bernstein’s Three Dance Episodes, from material composed for the musical On The Town, brings 1940s New York to life before your eyes, with its slinky jazz melodies, hopping bebop rhythms and irresistible swing.

NB: A Booking fee of $2.00 per ticket applies