Folk-influenced works to feature in upcoming NZSO concert

18 September, 2015 - NZSO media release for immediate release

Folk-influenced works to feature in upcoming NZSO concert

A vibrant programme of folk-influenced contemporary music will keep concertgoers on the edge of their seats at the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra’s (NZSO) next concert, Bold Worlds: Fire and Ice, featuring two works that were especially written for the conductor and guest soloist.

The programme includes Perú Negro by Jimmy Lopez, which was composed for the Bold Worlds conductor, Peruvian maestro Miguel Harth-Bedoya, and Kimmo Hakola’s Clarinet Concerto, written for world-renowned Finnish clarinettist Kari Kriikku.

Inspired by traditional songs of Afro-Peruvian music, Perú Negro was originally commissioned by Harth-Bedoya to celebrate the centennial season of Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra in Texas, where the maestro is music director. It has been reviewed as being like ‘a tropical storm’, with particular tribute to its ‘outgoing composition, boundless in energy, with much brass and percussion, fierce rhythms and a smashing ending’.

In 2001 Kriikku premiered Hakola’s colourful, klezmer-influenced Clarinet Concerto to critical acclaim. Kriikku’s famously energetic performances are renowned for bringing audiences to their feet and he has been lauded as a ‘physically flamboyant player of Olympian virtuosity’. Last time he played with the NZSO in 2009, he received rave reviews.

The final piece in this lively programme is Concerto for Orchestra by Witold Lutosławski. First performed in Warsaw in 1954, this immense work brought Lutosławski’s name to prominence in the West. It pays tribute to Polish folk music and is considered the crowning achievement of the folkloristic style in Lutosławski’s work.

Bold Worlds will tour to Wellington, Christchurch, Auckland and Hamilton.

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