Sinfonia’s Japan Tour Fundraising Concert
Conductor: Simon Over
Soloist: Stephen De Pledge (Piano)
Programme:
Anthony Ritchie: Remember Parihaka
Grieg: Piano Concerto
Brahms: Symphony No. 2
Off to Japan!
Southern Sinfonia has been invited by the Japanese government’s Agency for Cultural Affairs and the Japanese Symphony Orchestra Association to take part in their Asia Orchestra Week in October.
Dunedin audiences have the chance for a sneak preview of the programme Sinfonia will perform in Japan at Sinfonia’s Japan Tour Fundraising Concert, and at the same time have the opportunity to contribute to sending the orchestra on its way.
Stephen De Pledge, one of New Zealand’s leading pianists, will be making his début performance with the Sinfonia. The Midweek Herald said: “Rarely have I heard such superb playing from a young pianist. (De Pledge) brought equal authority to the discipline of Bach, the romanticism of Schumann and the impressionism of Ravel” – the perfect combination of skills for the Grieg Piano Concerto.
Travelling with the orchestra will be Dunedin composer Anthony Ritchie, and the Sinfonia is proud to perform Remember Parihaka, composed in 1994 while he was the orchestra’s Composer in Residence. The work recalls the 1881 government invasion of the Parihaka Pa despite the passive resistance by the Maori.
