Peter will present a talk about Mozart’s Requiem at 6.30 pm on 6 June – immediately before the performance of this masterpiece in Wellington Cathedral by the Voices New Zealand Chamber Choir and the Vector Wellington Orchestra conducted by Karen Grylls.
Peter has just accepted a one-year appointment as a part-time Professorial Teaching Fellow at The New Zealand School of Music (a joint venture between Victoria University of Wellington and Massey University).
The Opus Orchestra concerts in Hamilton (23 March, 8 pm, Gallagher Academy), Rotorua (24 March, 7.30 pm, Civic Theatre) and Tauranga (25 March, 3.30 pm, Graham Young Youth Theatre) were highly successful. The programme, entitled “Landscaapes” began with Douglas Lilburn’s Aotearoa Overture, and featured Opus Concertmaster, Lara Hall, as soloist in Tchaikovsky’s Souvenir d’un Lieu Cher (orchestrated by Glazunov). Ian Parsons was soloist in the Elgar Romance for Bassoon and Orchestra. The programme ends with Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6 in F major (the “Pastoral”). Warwick Braithwaite, nephew of the Warwick Braithwaite who conducted the premiere of the Aotearoa Overture in 1940, reviewed the Tauranga performance for The Bay of Plenty Times, writing, “from Lilburn to Beethoven the orchestra presented a programme of artistry and excellence.”
Some of Opus’s Hamilton Gardens Arts Festival concert in January is captured in a Waikato Times interview with Dame Malvina Major.
Following on from last November’s successful concerts, Peter will be presenting two further “Close Encounters” programmes with the NZSO in October 2012.
Peter is a member of the advisory board of the Francesco Geminiani Opera Omnia, general editor Christopher Hogwood. Peter’s edition of Geminiani’s two “taste” treatises (Rules for Playing in a True Taste and A Treatise of Good Taste in the Art of Musick (Vol. 12 of the Opera Omnia) has just been published. He is currently working on an edition of The Art of Playing on the Violin (Vol. 13 of the Opera Omnia). This edition will present Geminiani’s 1751 English text, the 1752 French text and Toricella’s 1782 German text in parallel.
The Cambridge History of Musical Performance ed. Colin Lawson and Robin Stowell has recently been published with a chapter by Peter on “Instrumental Music in the Long 18th Century”. Publiciation is imminent of CUP’s Mozart’s Chamber Music with Keyboard ed. Martin Harlow. This contains a chapter by Peter entitled “Opus 1, take 2: Mozart’s Mannheim and Paris sonatas for keyboard and violin”.
On 3 May, Peter gave the pre-concert talk for the New Zealand String Quartet’s performance of Beethoven’s first two Razumovsky Quartets. The very next night he gave the first of four pre-concert talks for the NZSO’s concerts with Andrew Grams and Lynn Harrell (soloist in the Elgar Cello Concerto).
Peter comments, “It felt like old times to be on tour with the NZSO and to be able to hear such a superb interpretation of Schumann’s Symphony No. 4 several times. I was delighted that doing these talks meant that I was in Auckland for my old friend, Vicki Jones’s last concert in the NZSO. She has made such an outstanding contribution over 33 years.”
Peter has just submitted a report for the Samoan Minister of Education, Sports and Culture on the development of an orchestra in Samoa. Peter spent the week 26-31 March there as the guest of the Samoan Government. He writes: “I was quite overwhelmed by the extraordinary natural talent and commitment to music of so many of those that I met. Even attending a church choir practice the night that I arrived was something of a revelation. The challenge now is to find ways of resourcing and empowering that talent.”