Next up for Opus Orchestra is their “Connections” tour celebrating their partnership with the Waikato University Music programme. The concerts will feature the winner of the University’s annual concerto competition, Andrew Leathwick, who will perform Prokofiev’s brilliant (and at times luxuriant) Third Piano Concerto. Andrew began studying piano under Katherine Austin at the Waikato Conservatorium of Music in 2010. In 2011, he was a semi-finalist in the Lev Vlassenko Australasian Piano Competition in Brisbane.

The programme opens with Mozart’s bravura Overture to The Abduction from the Seraglio which, in mood at least, is something of a contrast to Schubert’s dramatic Symphony No. 4 in C minor “The Tragic”, the main work in the second half of the concert. The Schubert is preceded by Takemitsu’s short but intensely moving “Requiem”. Peter says, “I was alerted to the beauty of this extraordinary piece by Hiroshi Ikematsu (the NZSO’s brilliant Principal Double Bass) who asked me to conduct it in a benefit concert he organized for the victims of the Fukishima earthquake. Ever since, I have wanted to programme it with Opus.”

 The concerts are in the Gallagher Academy at Waikato University on 22 September (8 pm), the Graham Young Youth Theatre in Tauranga on 23 September (7.30 pm), and the Civic Theatre, Rotorua, on 24 September (3 pm).