New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra
Orchestra
NZSO playing at Te Papa in 2009
Founded	1946
Concert hall	Michael Fowler Centre
Website	www.nzso.co.nz

The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra (NZSO) is the national orchestra of New Zealand. It is a crown entity owned by the Government of New Zealand, with 90 full-time players. The orchestra was officially founded in 1946. The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra Act 2004 established the orchestra as an autonomous Crown entity. It is currently based in the Michael Fowler Centre and frequently performs also in the adjacent Wellington Town Hall. It also performs in Auckland, and tours the country and the world.^[1][2][3]

The NZSO recorded part of Howard Shore's score for The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, notably the "Mines of Moria" sequence, as well as an alternate version of the cue "The Breaking of the Fellowship".^[4][5] The score won an Academy Award, the Grammy Award, and the World Soundtrack Award.^[6] The album peaked at number ten on the UK Albums Chart.^[7] NZSO also performed and recorded the entire score for The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, which was also composed by Shore.^[8]

History

The national orchestra was first proposed with the founding of the Radio Broadcasting Company in 1925, and broadcasting studio orchestras operated in major cities from the late 1920s. A national orchestra was formed in 1939 for New Zealand's Centennial Exhibition in 1940.

The orchestra became permanent in 1946 in the aftermath of World War II as the "National Orchestra of the New Zealand Broadcasting Service" (by Oswald Cheesman and others); the inaugural concert took place on 6 March 1947. It was managed as a department of the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation, which later became Radio New Zealand, as the NZBC National Orchestra and later the NZBC Symphony Orchestra.^[2][3][1]

It was renamed the NZBC Symphony Orchestra in 1963, still being administered by Radio New Zealand. In 1975 it became the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra. In 1988 it became fully independent of Radio New Zealand, and began operating as an independent Crown-owned company under its current name, the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra.^[1][2][3]

Performances

Touring

The NZSO has always had a heavy touring schedule within New Zealand. It performed in Christchurch as early as 1947. It performs its core series of 12 programmes in Wellington and Auckland, about half of those in Hamilton, Christchurch and Dunedin, and visits several provincial cities each year. It has several times toured overseas, notably in 2005 to the BBC Proms, the Snape Maltings, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and the World Expo at Aichi in Japan.^[9]

Conductors

Franz-Paul Decker was the last NZSO conductor to have the title of chief conductor, and had the title of Conductor Laureate until his death in May 2014. The first conductor to have the title of Music Director of the NZSO was James Judd, from 1999 to 2007. Judd is now the orchestra's Music Director Emeritus.

In May 2007, Pietari Inkinen was named the NZSO's second Music Director,^[10] and he formally took up the post in January 2008. Inkinen is scheduled to conclude his NZSO tenure in 2015 and subsequently to take the title of honorary conductor.^[11] In June 2015, the NZSO announced the appointment of Edo de Waart as its next music director, with his first concerts in the role to take place in March 2016.^[12]

The orchestra's affiliated conductors to date include:

• Anderson Tyrer (1947–1950)
• Michael Bowles (1950–1953)
• Warwick Braithwaite (1953–1954)
• James Robertson (1954–1957)
• John Hopkins (1957–1963)
• Juan Matteucci (1964–1968)
• Franz-Paul Decker (1991–1996, chief conductor)
• James Judd (1999–2007, music director)
• Pietari Inkinen (2008–present, music director)

Recordings

The NZSO has recorded several LPs and many CDs, several with internationally known soloists such as Alessandra Marc and Donald McIntyre. In the last decade it has sold 500,000 CDs. It records at least one CD of New Zealand music each year. It has made a number of recordings on the American Koch label and now (2007) records regularly with Naxos.^[13] The latest recordings are two CDs of music by Jean Sibelius^[14] and one CD of music by Einojuhani Rautavaara.

In 2012, the NZSO collaborated with Booktrack and Salman Rushdie to create music for an enhanced edition of Rusdhie's short story In the South .^[15]

Broadcast

Recorded performances of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra have been one of the cornerstones of the Concert programme since the orchestra was first formed.^[1][2][3] Despite the formal separation, Symphony Orchestra performances continue to be recorded, broadcast and archived by Radio New Zealand Concert. Auckland Town Hall, Wellington Town Hall and Michael Fowler Centre performances are broadcast live-to-air and streamed online, and performances in other centres or overseas cities are usually recorded and broadcast at a later date.^[16] On many occasions the pieces are from prominent composers, like Gustav Mahler, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Ludwig van Beethoven, Sergei Prokofiev or Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy. On other occasions, they are the work of local composers like Gareth Farr, James MacMillan or Chris Watson.^[17]

Subsidiary orchestras

National Youth Orchestra

The NZSO National Youth Orchestra was founded by John Hopkins in 1959.^[18] It auditions afresh each year and, after an intensive rehearsal schedule, performs one programme, in 2007 to be repeated in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch. In 2005 the orchestra inaugurated its Composer-in-Residence scheme appointing Robin Toan as first recipient of the award.^[19] In 2006, Claire Cowan was Composer-in-Residence.^[20]

The NYO celebrated its 50th Anniversary Celebratory Season in 2009, under the baton of Paul Daniel, with John Chen as soloist and Ben Morrison as Concertmaster. Their programme was Mahler's 7th Symphony, Ravel's Left-Hand piano concerto and an original composition by Natalie Hunt, Composer-in-Residence: Only to the Highest Mountain. The 2009 season also saw the return of John Hopkins to join in the celebrations.

New Zealand Chamber Orchestra

The New Zealand Chamber Orchestra was founded in 1987 by NZSO violinist Stephen Managh, its first leader, and comprises members of the NZSO. Later renamed the NZSO Chamber Orchestra, they toured and recorded extensively for 13 years. They generally performed without a conductor under the direction of their first violinist and Musical Director Donald Armstrong. They are not currently performing.^[21]

References

External links

• NZSO website, online September 1994, it claims to be the first orchestra website in the world.
• Discography
• NZSO music samples
• Radio New Zealand Concert online