Peerless virtuoso pianist to perform with the NZSO in July

18 June 2018

One of the world’s most exciting pianists returns to New Zealand in July to play one of the best loved pieces of music ever written for piano.

Macedonian musician Simon Trpčeski will perform Edvard Grieg’s powerful and exhilarating Piano Concerto with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra in a six-city tour from 13 July.

Grieg’s Piano Concerto is instantly recognisable and one of the most frequently performed of all piano concerti.

Simon Trpčeski Plays Grieg will also feature two works by famed Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich.

Audiences and critics praised Trpčeski’s last performances with the NZSO in 2015, when he played Liszt’s Second Piano Concerto. “Trpceski is a peerless virtuoso, with the confidence almost to flaunt it,” wrote The New Zealand Herald.

“Simon Trpčeski played it quite brilliantly without ever overdoing the pyrotechnics,” said The Dominion Post.

Trpčeski’s global success has made him one of Macedonia’s best-known musicians. “I am almost a pop star in Macedonia,” he quipped to The New York Times. “I meet a lot of people who have never heard of Macedonia or have heard of it, but have never met a Macedonian.”

The London Symphony and London Philharmonic Orchestras, the prestigious Royal Concertgebouw and the New York, Chicago, Boston, and Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestras are just a few of the top orchestras where Trpčeski is a frequent soloist.

He has worked with a long list of prominent conductors, while also being hailed for his solo recitals across the world.

“I love the freedom. I love the fact that I can breathe freely,” Trpčeski has said about being a musician. “There is no better way to express and feel than through the length of a single sound … It is probably a close description of heaven.”

Simon Trpčeski Plays Grieg will be led by acclaimed Spanish conductor Jaime Martín, who also wowed critics when he conducted the NZSO in 2015. The Dominion Post said that under Martín the NZSO delivered a “hair-raising performance” of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. “Few performances – and none I have heard – have managed to achieve this,” wrote reviewer John Button.

Martín will also conduct the Orchestra performing Shostakovich’s dazzling Festive Overture and his epic Symphony No. 10.

The composer’s Tenth Symphony, his first in eight years, premiered several months after the death of Stalin in 1953, an event which may have impacted on the symphony’s creation. The work has attracted countless interpreters, with some calling it Shostakovich’s greatest symphony. Some critics have speculated that the second movement alludes to Stalin himself.

Shostakovich’s joyous Festive Overture premiered in 1954 and remains a popular work. It was played at the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow.

ENDS

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