Spring Symphony

Live music is back, and Orchestra Wellington have announced a programme of events which we will be attending as much as we can (it will be interrupted by our travels to the Northern Hemisphere). On Saturday night, we headed in to town to see three pieces:

Overture in C (Fanny Mendelssohn)

The All-seeing-Sky (Ioannis John Psathas)

Symphony No.1 “Spring” (Robert Schumann)

I formulated a cunning plan to stop off in Hataitai for a bite to eat before the concert. One of our favourite eateries, BambuchiSan, has cut back its opening hours so severely that we haven’t been there since ages ago. But Saturday night they’re open – yippee! Unfortunately, they were also fully booked – boo! So that plan was foiled, and instead we went to The Realm, which served us so-so food. 

We arrived in town and parked at Te Papa, then made our way to the Michael Fowler Centre. The first piece, by Felix Mendelssohn’s older sister, who was considered equally as gifted as her brother; but, living in the 19^th century, didn’t get the recognition she deserved. The second piece is more modern – indeed, the composer is still with us – and played on two instruments, the marimba and the vibraphone, with the orchestra. The two soloists, Fabian Ziegler and Lucas Staffelbach, have worked closely with OW composer-in-residence Psathas before. This is the world premiere for the piece.

In case you don’t know the difference between a vibraphone and a marimba, this is a vibraphone: 

And this is a marimba:

They look fairly similar. The vibraphone is smaller, though, and also has a foot-pedal which can be, er, pedalled.

The final piece was Schumann’s No.1 “Spring” Symphony. Why they were playing it in autumn wasn’t made clear. Still, they played away, and all managed to finish at the same time, which is always an accomplishment.

When Booty Calls

As life returns to quasi-normal (we’re still under the Orange Covid traffic light setting here), we can now go back to theatres. We’re supposed to wear masks throughout, but everyone I saw took theirs off as soon as they sat down.

BATS Theatre have a show called When Booty Calls, an action romcom with pirates. What’s not to like? We haven’t been to BATS for a while, but this is just the sort of thing at which they excel. Liz and Jen are pirates, marooned ashore after a battle in which they’ve decided that the pirate’s life is not for them. They have to overcome other pirates, love, lust, kraken, and poison to reach the end of the show. It’s very silly, but well-written with great fight scenes and frequent breaking of the fourth wall.

Afterwards we went for dinner at Capitol. Again, we’ve not been there for quite a while, due mainly to their restricted opening hours over the last few months. I asked about this and was delighted to hear that not only will they be opening for lunch again soon, but also that they have a new venture starting at Wellington Zoo, of all places. We’ll keep an eye out on these to see how they go.