Love's Redemption

Tecwyn Evans - conductor
Clarry Bartha - soprano

Dadson - Maya
Wagner - Brunnhilde’s Immolation from Gotterdammerung
Elgar - Enigma Variations Op.36

This concert has all the colour, drama and power you would expect from the opening concert of the orchestra’s Masterworks series.

Soprano Clarry Bartha makes her New Zealand debut performing Brünnhildes Immolation scene from Götterdämmerung, the fourth and final opera in Wagner’s epic Ring Cycle. Amongst one of the most breathtaking moments in opera, the Immolation scene reaches a dramatic conclusion when Brünnhilde mounts her horse and rides into the flames of the funeral pyre of her beloved Siegfried.

Described as an Intermedia Artist, New Zealander, Philip Dadson has developed an international reputation for innovative sound/performance style that includes sculptural, ritual and theatrical elements. Maya is a counter-millennial fanfare for orchestra commissioned in 1999 by the Auckland Philharmonia.

First performed in 1899, Edward Elgar’s Variations on an Original Theme (“Enigma”) like most overnight successes was the result of years of hard work. Elgar was 42 years old when he completed the Variations and despite bitter disappointments and frustrations, he steadily built up a reputation for brilliant orchestration and growing mastery of large forms. Richard Strauss declared that ‘here for the first time is an English composer who has something to say’. But it was Elgar’s uniquely personal approach to the form that gave the ‘Enigma’ Variations op.36 its initial novelty and now lasting appeal.