The NZ Symphony Orchestra has lately been buffeted by off-stage turbulence, with the sudden departure of CEO Peter Biggs, and a subsequent investigation that exonerated Biggs but cast shadows elsewhere. On stage, things are smoother and the concert season features several major touring artists. Among them are superstar mezzo Joyce DiDonato in November, and pianist Daniil Trifonov, who plays Rachmaninov in April. October features the world premiere of a Stabat Mater by Victoria Kelly. In fact, the whole season looks impressive – unless you live in Ōtepoti Dunedin. Shamefully, the national orchestra doesn’t visit the city at all.
If you can only pick one: Legends (May). The great Masaaki Suzuki conducts Bach, Mozart and Beethoven.
Auckland Philharmonia has the looming spectre of Creative New Zealand’s scrapping of multi-year Kahikatea funding, which will make it harder for the orchestra to plan ahead. For 2025, however, it is bringing back big-deal violinist James Ehnes for concerts of Brahms and Bartók (February) and the fantastic pianist Benjamin Grosvenor (Mozart in October). The most welcome return, however, is New Zealand music, notably absent from mainstage concerts in 2024.
Pick one: In Baroque & Beyond (October) which has Bloch programmed with Biber’s weird, wonderful Battalia.
Orchestra Wellington music director Marc Taddei has been on programming fire of late, with seasons that are short but tightly and ingeniously constructed. In 2025, Taddei and OW go all in on the 50th anniversary of Shostakovich’s death, with the first five symphonies. No 5 is programmed with composer-in-residence Victoria Kelly’s Requiem, the sensation of the 2023 Auckland Arts Festival (November).
Pick one: Enemy of the State (October). OW and soprano Madeleine Pierard perform extracts from the opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, the work that led to Shostakovich being denounced by the Soviet authorities.
Christchurch Symphony Orchestra’s 2025 is bursting with New Zealand music. Salina Fisher and Jerome Kavanagh’s we’re-not-calling-it-a-concerto piece for taonga puoro and orchestra, Papatūānuku, gets a welcome airing (March). So do Claire Cowan’s ballet Cinderella (June), and shorter works from Dorothy Buchanan and Leonie Holmes (both September). Tēnā koe, CSO.
Pick one: Harris, Beethoven (November). Our leading symphonist, Ross Harris, has his newie (No 8) performed alongside history’s leading symphonist, Beethoven (No 9). No pressure.
New Kiwi music for Dunedin Symphony Orchestra too, with Dame Gillian Whitehead’s The Journey of Mataatua Whare for soloists, chorus and orchestra debuting for Matariki (June). Elsewhere, Aotearoa’s busiest violinist, Amalia Hall, plays Piazzolla’s slinky Four Seasons of Buenos Aires in August, while soprano Anna Leese brings the season to an early close in September with Poulenc’s Gloria, in a concert that also features Saint-Saëns’ Organ Symphony No 3.
Pick one: It has to be the Whitehead, which is coupled with Brahms’ second piano concerto, performed by the excellent Jian Liu.
