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.