Dunedin Youth Orchestra
“From Russia With Love”
Press Release September 2012
By Dominic Tay
Take a trip to Russia courtesy of the Dunedin Youth Orchestra.
The fifty-strong orchestra, comprised of musicians under the age of 25, is currently preparing for its annual spring
concert to be held in Knox Church on Tuesday 25 September at 7:30pm. Peter Adams will conduct the orchestra in “From
Russia With Love”, which features violin soloist Stephanie Buzzard.
The programme includes well-known Russian composers Kabalevsky, Khachaturian, and Prokofiev, and will also premiere a
new work by Dunedin composer Alex Campbell-Hunt.
Buzzard, a long-standing member of the orchestra and fourth-year music and pharmacy student at the University of Otago,
won one of two DYO Young Musicians Awards in 2011. She will perform Kabalevsky’s Violin Concerto accompanied by the orchestra. The work is laced with chromaticism, and also exhibits Russian folk melodies.
The 2012 DYO Young Musicians Awards will be presented at this concert.
Campbell-Hunt won the second annual Audrey Reid Composition Prize in May this year. This prize was established by DYO in
2010 in an effort to promote composition among young musicians. Three movements from the winning composition Canada Suite will be performed for the first time by the Youth Orchestra. Campbell-Hunt, a former student of composition at the
University of Otago, is now pursuing further study in Canada.
“Adagio of Spartacus and Phyrgia” from the Khachaturian ballet Spartacus and Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 7 round off an exciting, challenging programme.
DYO has been providing a training ground for talented young Dunedin musicians since 1972 and many members have gone on
to play in the Southern Sinfonia and NZSO and to careers overseas. Entry for the ‘From Russia With Love’ concert is by
programme available at the door, and are priced at $15 for adults, $10 for students and unwaged, $5 for high school
students. Children are free.