Youth Orchestra Takes On A Titan Of The Music World In Wellington

Aotearoa New Zealand’s best young orchestral musicians unite in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington on 7 July to perform one of the greatest symphonic works ever written: Gustav Mahler’s First Symphony Titan.

The NZSO National Youth Orchestra will be led by acclaimed Australian conductor Fabian Russell, who founded The Orchestra Project, a training programme for pre-eminent young Australian musicians.

The concert NYO Titan in Association with the Adam Foundation and Corporate Sponsor nzherald.co.nz, also features the world premiere of Wāhi Ngaro by National Youth Orchestra Composer-in-Residence David Mason and German composer Paul Hindemith’s dramatic Symphonic Metamorphosis of Themes by Carl Maria von Weber.

Mason draws on both his Māori heritage and his classical music training for his new work.

“By integrating the style and colour of traditional Māori music with the vast malleable sonic capabilities of the Orchestra, I aim to develop a wholly Māori orchestral sound,” he says.

Inspired by piano duets from classical composer Carl Maria von Weber, Hindemith borrowed from Weber’s delightful tunes and symphonically transformed them. The result is his irrepressibly entertaining Symphonic Metamorphoses on Carl Maria von Weber, overflowing with splashes of orchestral colour.

Mahler always thought a symphony should contain a whole world. Titan celebrates the entire universe. Deploying his unique genius for folding song into symphony, Mahler’s First Symphony memorably quotes Lieder from his own song cycle Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (Songs of the Wayfarer), as well as referencing nursery rhyme Frére Jacques, bird calls, Austrian ländler dances, and Eastern-European wedding music.

Tickets to NYO Titan at Wellington’s Michael Fowler Centre are available via ticketmaster.co.nz

NYO Titan will also be performed in Ōtautahi Christchurch on 9 July.

NZSO Members receive two free tickets to the National Youth Orchestra concert of their choice. Additional membership tickets are $9 each.

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