"Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra (APO) regrets to advise that the upcoming Beethoven 250 Symphony Series concerts will not go ahead as planned, owing to the critical Covid-19 situation and the Government’s new limits on mass public gatherings.

We are however delighted to announce that the APO will still be performing each of the Beethoven concerts for you to enjoy via a livestream on the APO website and Facebook page as well as other third-party digital channels."

 

 

Beethoven Symphony No.8

Beethoven Symphony No.9

Beethoven’s whimsical, amiable Eighth Symphony is the work of a great artist who also happens to be a fellow human, laughing and joking like the rest of us.

Our shared symphonic journey ends with a mighty hymn to our universal humanity, the heaven-storming Ninth. The orchestra alone wasn’t enough for Beethoven’s ecstatic vision: voices were necessary. ‘All men shall become brothers,’ they sing. ‘I embrace you, O you millions – this kiss is for all the world!’ With this music, with its vast, elemental force, Beethoven speaks to us across the centuries and into infinity.

This event is part of a four concert series where we will be playing all nine of Beethoven's symphonies.

Featuring ensemble of singers from the three national choirs:
Voices New Zealand Chamber Choir
New Zealand Youth Choir
New Zealand Secondary Students' Choir

Britten   Simple Symphony
Handel   Music for the Royal Fireworks
Fauré      Requiem [1893 ed. Rutter]

‘Once upon a time there was a prep-school boy’, wrote Britten. ‘There was one curious thing: he wrote music, reams of it’. The former prep-school boy recycled some of his best juvenilia into this captivating piece.

Handel’s splendid Fireworks Music was composed for a grand celebration, marred only by stray pyrotechnics burning down some buildings. The APO’s pyrotechnics will be solely musical.

Fauré saw death as ‘an aspiration towards the happiness of the hereafter’; his bright, serene Requiem entirely omits Judgment Day. The great British choral conductor Stephen Layton returns to the APO with Fauré’s intimate, rarely heard original version.

Conductor Stephen Layton
Soprano Sara Macliver
Baritone Laurence Williams

Voices New Zealand Chamber Choir
Director Karen Grylls

Blue Planet II Live in Concert at Kiri Te Kanawa Theatre on Wednesday 22 July 2020 will need to be rescheduled. We hope to make an announcement of a new date for this concert experience in the coming weeks. For the time being, please hold on to your ticket(s) while we work with BBC Studios and Auckland Live to reschedule the event.

In the meantime, if you have any questions, please contact ticketing@apo.co.nz.

 

Blue Planet II Live in Concert takes you beneath the surface of the world’s oceans and up close with the fascinating creatures of our underwater world.

This immersive concert experience features breath-taking visuals from the multi-award winning BBC Earth television series on the big screen, with the original music score by Hans Zimmer, Jacob Shea and David Fleming, performed live by the APO.

Watch surfing dolphins, powerful killer whales, colourful clownfish and ethereal jellyfish. From icy polar seas to vibrant coral reefs, from the luminous deep sea to vast undulating kelp forests — Blue Planet II Live in Concert is an unforgettable exploration of the awe-inspiring wonders of the deep.

Presented by BBC Studios, Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra and Auckland Live

Proudly sponsored by Meridian Energy

Blue Planet II is a BBC Studios Natural History Unit Production

 

Come on a festive journey with NZ Youth Choir and special guests, VOICES New Zealand!

In this cracker of a concert, these two national choirs have much to celebrate. Not only the festive season and warmer days, but it's also our 40th anniversary year!

NZ Youth Choir will be performing a selection from our Pacific repertoire, specially celebrating Pacific music. This is your last chance to see this choir before their first ever Pacific tour. They are journeying  to Samoa by plane, then on the MS Maasdam Cruise Ship to Tonga, Fiji, Niue, New Caledonia, and Australia.

VOICES NZ with be performing well known Christmas songs, including brand new arrangements from some of Aotearoa's most esteemed composers. Directed by Dr Karen Grylls, this choir fills a room with festive cheer.

"Voices New Zealand Chamber Choir...was magnificent, the men in striding good form, the sopranos fearless and unerring above the stave." - NZ Herald

This is a rare chance to see two of New Zealand's top choirs perform together. Plus we'll be debuting our first ever Virtual Choir!

With support from

PRESENTED BY CHAMBER MUSIC NEW ZEALAND

Voices New Zealand perform a stunning musical and visual reminder about the beauty and importance of our oceans, essential to survival on our planet. This inspiring concert celebrates our oceans as taonga with uplifting and moving music from around the globe.

A newly commissioned work by New Zealand’s Warren Maxwell (composer of the glorious soundtrack to the Waka Odyssey in the 2018 NZ Festival) will capture his personal experiences of the Southern Ocean and Antarctica when spending time on the ice. Traversing the northern ocean currents, Finnish composer Jaakko Mäntyjärvi will create a new work about the Arctic Ocean.

A landscape of projected moving images will accompany the music. Created by multimedia artists Tim and Mic Gruchy whose visual designs have featured in works by the likes of Opera Australia, Sydney Theatre Company, New Zealand Festival and Australian Dance Theatre, this will be a spectacular audio visual celebration.

This project is supported by

The familiar Christmas music is a prelude to Handel’s main concern, the Passion and Resurrection of Christ. It is an Easter piece, then, and so too are Bach’s two Passions and his Easter Oratorio.

Handel is always played in December, but liturgically this is quite wrong. The familiar Christmas music is a prelude to Handel’s main concern, the Passion and Resurrection of Christ. It is an Easter piece, then, and so too are Bach’s two Passions and his Easter Oratorio.

Sofi Jeannin, the new Chief Conductor of the prestigious BBC Singers, has devised an imaginative programme telling the Easter story using all four of these towering pieces, including the ever-popular Hallelujah Chorus. With an exceptional cast of singers and Voices New Zealand Chamber Choir it promises to be profoundly moving on a spiritual level and sublime on a musical one, just in time for Easter.

Conductor Sofi Jeannin
Singers include: Sally-Anne Russell, Henry Choo, James Ioelu
Voices New Zealand Chamber Choir
Director Karen Grylls

Arias and choruses from:

Handel Messiah
J.S. Bach Easter Oratorio
J.S. Bach St John Passion
J.S. Bach St Matthew Passion

 

NOTE: If you want to book tickets to only this production, please click here.

 

This is one of Mahler’s most popular works. Using massive forces – vocal soloists, a choir, extra wind and percussion and offstage brass and percussion – to create high drama, there are also many quieter, intimate moments.

Mahler wrote various programs for this work highlighting the struggles of a hero who finally succumbs to death. The first movement represents a funeral. The second remembers happy times. The third “when you awaken from a blissful dream and are forced to return to this tangled life of ours”. The fourth is a wish for release from a life without meaning. In the final movement “the end of every living thing has come; the Last Judgment is at hand … the trumpets of the Apocalypse ring out.”

Mahler later withdrew the program, telling his wife that “it gives only a superficial indication, all that any program can do for a musical work.”

Swedish mezzo-soprano Anna Larsson is renowned for her Mahler interpretations, which she has sung with the world’s greatest orchestras.

Graduating from The Juilliard School in 2011, American soprano Lauren Snouffer is one of the most versatile young sopranos on the international stage.

Edo de Waart Conductor
Lauren Snouffer Soprano
Anna Larsson Mezzo-soprano
Voices New Zealand Chamber Choir
Orpheus Choir of Wellington (Wellington only)
Auckland Choral (Auckland only)

Mahler Symphony No. 2 in C minor Resurrection

 

NOTE: If you would like to book tickets to only this production, you can click here.

 

Composer Anna Clyne has collaborated with choreographers, artists, orchestras and musicians worldwide. One such collaboration, Abstractions II (Auguries), III (Seascape) and IV (River) was inspired by several artworks from the Baltimore Museum of Art.

La Mort de Cléopâtre (The Death of Cleopatra) by Hector Berlioz is a dramatic cantata, with text by French poet and playwright Pierre-Ange Vieillard. It was composed when Berlioz was just 25 years old. Featuring leading American mezzo-soprano Susan Graham, whose operatic appearances include the Paris Opera, The Met, Milan’s La Scala and Covent Garden Royal Opera House.

English composer Gustav Holst’s most famous work, The Planets, finds inspiration not only in the planets of our solar system, but their astrological character. Written in seven movements (one for each of the known planets at the time) The first, Mars, inspired the composers of both the Star Wars and Gladiator movies. The last, Neptune, deploys an off-stage female choir, which is where Voices New Zealand join this dramatic work.

The approximate runtime for this concert is 1 hour and 50 minutes.

Edo de Waart Conductor
Susan Graham Mezzo-soprano
Voices New Zealand Chamber Choir

Anna Clyne Abstractions: II, III, IV
Berlioz La Mort de Cléopâtre (The Death of Cleopatra)
Holst The Planets

 

NOTE: If you would like to book tickets to only this production, you can click here.

Music Director Edo de Waart, is joined by a stellar group of soloists and Voices New Zealand to end the Beethoven Festival in style.

Beethoven’s Eighth Symphony is light-hearted and cheerful. It is one of Beethoven’s shortest symphonies, with a second movement much faster than most symphonic second movements. It is said to imitate the newly invented metronome. Beethoven met the metronome’s inventor, Johann Mälzel, at a dinner party while writing this work.

The Ninth Symphony is regarded as one of Beethoven’s finest works. It has the largest orchestra of his symphonies and was the first symphony by a major composer to use voices. In the final movement, the voices sing the triumphant Ode to Joy, a poem by Friedrich Schiller.

The work premiered in 1824 in Vienna. The audience gave rousing ovations, including waving handkerchiefs and lifting hats so that the deaf composer, who could not hear the applause, could see the ecstatic response.

Beethoven’s Choral Symphony is frequently featured in film, TV and even video games.

As we head towards the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birthday in 2020, his music is as relevant today as it was when it premiered.

Edo de Waart Conductor
Sabina Cvilak Soprano
Kristin Darragh Mezzo-soprano
Kim Begley Tenor
Anthony Robin Schneider Bass
Voices New Zealand Chamber Choir

Beethoven Symphony No. 8 in F major, Op. 93
Beethoven Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125 Choral

 

AUCKLAND CONCERT SOLD OUT!

NOTE: To buy a ticket to only this production, please click here.

SUPPORTED BY

foundatin north 220wide
WCC logo_REV 210wide
Auckland Council logo white_210wide
WCT logo_210wide

 

This musical and visual concert features breath-taking footage from Sir David Attenborough’s iconic BBC Earth series, on the big screen. The full force of the APO and VOICES New Zealand performing the remarkable music by the Academy Award winner Hans Zimmer, Jacob Shea and Jasha Klebe, will accompany the antics of acrobatic primates, fearsome hunting lions, death-defying penguins and dancing grizzly bears.

Celebrate the greatest treasures of our planet in a thrilling, unique way. Planet Earth II Live in Concert is the story of nature on an unprecedented, noble and epic scale.

Conductor David Kay

Planet Earth II is a BBC Studios Natural History Unit production, co-produced with BBC America, ZDF, Tencent and France Télévisions