In his New Zealand debut with the NZSO, virtuoso Olivier Latry will perform Francis Poulenc’s Organ Concerto in Wellington and Auckland, and Haydn’s Organ Concerto in C Major in Christchurch.

Olivier Latry is not just a star in his native France, but has performed to acclaim in more than 50 countries. He was only 23 when he became a tenured organist of the Notre Dame de Paris cathedral. He is a towering figure in French organ music and is presently a professor of the renowned Paris Conservatory.

Olivier Latry is hailed for the elegance and vigour of his playing, brilliantly exploiting the tonal range and colour of the classical organ. His performances are said to be standard-setting for their prodigious dexterity and flights of imagination.

His appearances are famously thrilling for concertgoers, including audiences without a previous appreciation for organ music. The Guardian reviewer Tristan Jakob Hoff declared: “Olivier Latry is an organ god and, in the space of a single performance…he turned me into a fan of an instrument I formerly loathed. There is no better feeling as a concertgoer than that of having your own long-held prejudices uprooted.”

Poulenc’s twentieth-century concerto for organ, timpani and strings is said to have redefined organ music. The NZSO will also perform two sparkling works of classical magic: Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade, inspired by The Arabian Nights, and The Sorcerer’s Apprentice by Paul Dukas, immortalised by Walt Disney’s classic 1940 movie Fantasia.

The NZSO Spellbound tour is led by charismatic Bulgarian guest conductor Rossen Milanov, leading the NZSO for the first time. Music Director of the Princeton Symphony Orchestra and a major figure among international youth orchestras, Rossen Milanov led the NZSO National Youth Orchestra for its highly regarded 2010 tour. He is known as a conductor who must be seen by anyone who cares about the future of music.

Rossen Milanov will give a free 30-minute talk in Auckland and Wellington, 45-minutes prior to each performance. For details of NZSO pre-concert talks, visit http://www.nzso.co.nz/concerts/2012-season-pre-concert-talks/

NZSO Spellbound is presented in association with National Bank Private Banking.

In his New Zealand debut with the NZSO, virtuoso Olivier Latry will perform Haydn’s Organ Concerto in C Major in a special performance chosen to suit the Orchestra’s interim concert venue, Burnside High School’s Aurora Centre.

Olivier Latry is not just a star in his native France, but has performed to acclaim in more than 50 countries. He was only 23 when he became a tenured organist of the Notre Dame de Paris cathedral. He is a towering figure in French organ music and is presently a professor of the renowned Paris Conservatory.

Olivier Latry is hailed for the elegance and vigour of his playing, brilliantly exploiting the tonal range and colour of the classical organ. His performances are said to be standard-setting for their prodigious dexterity and flights of imagination.

His appearances are famously thrilling for concertgoers, including audiences without a previous appreciation for organ music. The Guardian reviewer Tristan Jakob Hoff declared: “Olivier Latry is an organ god and, in the space of a single performance… he turned me into a fan of an instrument I formerly loathed. There is no better feeling as a concertgoer than that of having your own long-held prejudices uprooted.”

The NZSO will also perform two sparkling works of classical magic: Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade, inspired by The Arabian Nights, and The Sorcerer’s Apprentice by Paul Dukas, immortalised by Walt Disney’s classic 1940 movie Fantasia.

The NZSO Spellbound tour is led by charismatic Bulgarian guest conductor Rossen Milanov, leading the NZSO for the first time. Music Director of the Princeton Symphony Orchestra and a major figure among international youth orchestras, Rossen Milanov led the NZSO National Youth Orchestra for its highly regarded 2010 tour. He is known as a conductor who must be seen by anyone who cares about the future of music.

NZSO Spellbound is presented in association with National Bank Private Banking.

Please note there will be no pre-concert talk ahead of this performance.

Led by star Kiwi conductor Hamish McKeich, this annual concert celebration of New Zealand music brings together these two taonga – the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra and New Zealand String Quartet – to mark the 25th anniversary of the distinguished New Zealand String Quartet.

Wonderland begins with the combined strengths of both the NZSO and NZSQ in one of Wellington-born composer Lyell Cresswell’s most valued works, Concerto for Orchestra and String Quartet. Composed in memory of some friends who died too early, this nationally treasured work searches for agreement between the complex and the approachable within one continuous movement comprising 11 sections.

Another treasured New Zealand composer Chris Cree Brown’s spectacular Celestial Bodies merges music and media. Premiered by the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra at the 2005 Christchurch Arts Festival, this complex work contemplates the heavens above through the machinations of the orchestra, electro-acoustic sounds, and images from Christchurch-based visual artist Julia Morrison. Known for his conventional instrumental composition, electro acoustic and computer music, and inter-media art, Cree Brown is currently the Associate Professor at the School of Music, University of Canterbury.

The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra rounds out this celebration of home-grown talent with Gillian Whitehead’s exceptional cantata Alice, performed by mezzo-soprano Helen Medlyn, for whom the eight-movement work was composed.

This descriptive monodrama tells the story of how Alice Adcock, a lively and adventurous young woman from Manchester, travelled to New Zealand in 1909 to rid herself of tuberculosis. It worked, and the 23-year-old emigrant lived for a further 50 years of life. This is her story – it has the resonances of a universal myth, known to all of us who have crossed the seas to begin a new life, with unforeseen and unimaginable difficulties.

“I love how Gillian writes,” says Helen Medlyn. “She conjures up wonderful colours in her orchestrations which create deep emotions and clear-cut environments so vividly for me.

“One of my favourite musical moments in Alice would be the storm which Alice encounters on her way out to New Zealand and tells her family about in the first song. The music puts me on the ocean and I can see the ship, the passengers and the cargo getting tossed about in the tempest. Another favourite moment would have to be the mystical few bars at the beginning and in the middle of the fifth song, when a combination of instruments deliver a strangely eerie ‘slide’ that I feel speaks of the deep grief Alice feels at the death of her father.”

Vivacious mezzo-soprano, Helen Medlyn, will add her usual flavour of musical spice and skill to her performance of this innovative final work in this wonderful concert celebration of New Zealand music.

Made In New Zealand: Wonderland is one of the most anticipated concerts in the 2012 NZ Music Month calendar.

 “…with conductor Hamish McKeich… even the impossible holds no fear for the NZSO… the audience loved it all.” Lindis Taylor, NZ Listener, Made in New Zealand 2011.

NZSO Chief Executive Christopher Blake will lead each pre-concert talk featuring all three New Zealand composers (Chris Cree Brown, Lyell Cresswell and Gillian Whitehead) in Wellington (Ilott Theatre, Town Hall) and Auckland (Supper Room, Town Hall), 45-minutes prior to each performance.

The NZSO tour of Wellington and Auckland represents a rare chance for audiences to experience Richard Strauss’s colossal score in its full glory, helmed by one of the most honoured living conductors in the world.

Strauss’s extravagant final symphony tells the story of mountaineers on a storm-hit climb in the Swiss Alps. It calls for more than 100 musicians and multiple extra instruments, including an organ, a wind machine and the rarely-played woodwind instrument, the heckelphone.  An off-stage brass ensemble, additional woodwinds and beefed-up percussion will augment the Orchestra for the masterwork.

Five-times Grammy Award winner David Zinman will make his New Zealand début with the NZSO on this tour.

With a discography of more than 100 recordings and many international honours, including the prestigious Theodore Thomas Award, he is widely considered one of the finest conductors working today.

David Zinman has guest-conducted all the major US orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic and the Boston, Chicago and San Francisco Symphony Orchestras. He works regularly with leading European orchestras, including the Berlin Philharmonic. He is presently the Music Director of the acclaimed Tonhalle Orchestra of Zurich.

David Zinman says the aim of live classical music is to electrify and invigorate the concert hall: “Live music-making should be a vital and gripping experience … go to a concert and turn your mind on, rather than off.”

The NZSO will also perform Mozart’s effervescent Prague Symphony – a personal favourite of David Zinman’s.

The NZSO Alpine Symphony tour is presented in association with Minter Ellison Rudd Watts. A free 30-minute pre-concert talk will take place in each venue 45-minutes prior to the performance.

Back by popular demand, Harrell’s presence is felt throughout the musical world. He is a consummate soloist, chamber musician, recitalist, conductor and teacher, and his work throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia has placed him in the highest echelon of today’s performing artists.

His commanding 2003 performance of Elgar’s masterpiece with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra was critically acclaimed and received standing ovations nationwide.

“Harrell took us on quite a journey from the ambling innocence of Elgar’s opening theme to the almost unbearable poignancy of the final Lento. The sheer force of his virtuosity in the Allegro was astonishing.” William Dart, NZ Herald, 25 August, 2003.

“Harrell’s cello sings with relaxed warmth… He seduces you with the intimacy of his playing, drawing you inward to the heart of a work as though playing to you privately. That’s the uniqueness of this great artist.” Ian Dando reviews the Christchurch Town Hall concert, 15 August, NZ Listener.

Elgar’s Cello Concerto was inspired after the English composer witnessed the despair of World War I. Some theories examine the notion that this emotionally-driven work was provoked by memories of his first great love, Helen Weaver, who emigrated to New Zealand after their relationship ended. Allegedly, after receiving word that Weaver’s son had been killed fighting in France, Elgar was moved to write this astonishing war requiem.

Whether this link to New Zealand is true, there is little doubt that Elgar’s Concerto is one of the most popular works ever written for the cello. It memorialises our fallen soldiers – a fitting tribute so close to Anzac Day.

Leading the orchestra through this masterpiece, as well as Mendelssohn’s Hebrides Overture and Schumann’s equally dramatic Symphony No. 4, is one of America’s most promising conductors Maestro Andrew Grams.

Grams was a protégé of Franz Welser-Moest and served as Assistant Conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra from 2004 to 2007. He has already appeared with many of the great orchestras of the world including the Cleveland Orchestra, Orchestre National de Lyon, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra of Santa Cecilia, and Hamburg Symphony Orchestra to name a few.

This time the Maryland native and accomplished violinist leads us through Mendelssohn’s Hebrides Overture in his debut with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra. Hebrides Overture, which was written in 1830, was inspired by a cavern known as Fingal’s Cave on Staffa, an island in the Hebrides archipelago located off the west coast of Scotland. This programmatic work moves from themes depicting feelings of solitude within the cave, to the sense of crashing, rolling waves and salty sea breezes.

Not long after, Schumann composed his Fourth Symphony. This Romantic work’s emotional introduction Romanze creates an alluring atmosphere which permeates through the whole work. Sinewy phrases soon transform into more rhythmic uplifting passages which will inspire and enliven your mood.

Experience triumphant defiance and exquisite beauty in this inspiring New Zealand Symphony Orchestra concert For the Fallen.