Carnival - Auckland

Carnival is an exhilarating night of playful music featuring Ravel and Stravinsky.

The NZSO 2021 Podium Series opens in carnival mode, with a performance of the first of Stravinsky’s ground-breaking ballets: Petrushka. This Russian balletic version of the characters better known as the puppets Punch and Judy has been wowing audiences with its raucous orchestral timbres, vibrant instrumentation, and driving, irresistible rhythms.

The playful colourful mood is also on display in English composer Anna Clyne’s piece Masquerade. Championed by both the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the New York Times declared her “a composer of uncommon gifts”.

Carnival also features Stravinsky’s contemporary, Maurice Ravel. Ravel’s well-loved piece La Valse is the sweeping twentieth-century version of the waltz, while his Piano Concerto in G, bursting out of the blocks with a whip crack, barrels along with irrepressible energy.

Hamish McKeich, Conductor
Stephen De Pledge, Piano

Ravel, La Valse
Ravel, Piano Concerto in G Major
Anna Clyne, Masquerade
Stravinsky, Petrushka (1947 version)