Provocateurs

Giancarlo Guerrero, Conductor
Valentina Lisitsa, Piano

Tabea Squire, Variations
Prokofiev, Piano Concerto No. 3
Rachmaninov, The Isle of the Dead
Bartók, Suite from The Miraculous Mandarin

Conductor Giancarlo Guerrero, renowned for his Grammy Award-winning recordings of contemporary American composers, conducts the NZSO in a clutch of provocative 20th-century classics.

Rachmaninov’s lush and brooding Isle of the Dead sprang from Arnold Böcklin’s painting of a looming island, approached by a lone rowboat carrying a coffin. Bartók’s The Miraculous Mandarin was originally a pantomime ballet depicting both the sounds of the urban jungle, but also the depravity within.

Valentina Lisitsa performs Prokofiev’s best-loved Piano Concerto, his third. Lisitsa, one of the first viral classical music stars, is now a globe-trotting concert pianist whose playing has been praised by The Guardian as displaying “a special combination of utterly self-assured virtuosity and real lyricism and communication.”

NZ composer Tabea Squire’s piece Variations is the first of her works to be premiered in an NZSO subscription series. The youngest ever composer to be awarded the NZSO/NYO Composer-in-Residence position, her works have been premiered in Melbourne, Adelaide, and London.