Manukau Symphony Orchestra Presents Romantic Fire

Saturday 7 March, 7.00pm - Due Drop Events Centre, Manukau
Tickets available at: https://www.eventfinda.co.nz/2026/romantic-fire/auckland/manukau-city/tickets

The Manukau Symphony Orchestra opens its 2026 season with Romantic Fire – an evening of high drama, virtuosity and powerful storytelling.

Under the direction of Uwe Grodd, the programme features Dvořák’s Carnival Overture, Saint-Saëns’s Cello Concerto No. 1, and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4, with leading New Zealand cellist Andrew Joyce as soloist.

Dvořák’s Carnival Overture opens the concert with bright energy and driving rhythm.

Saint-Saëns’ First Cello Concerto unfolds in one continuous span, with the soloist stepping forward from the very first bar. Andrew Joyce brings clarity and authority to one of the instrument’s great showpieces.

At the heart of the programme is Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony, written during a year of personal upheaval. In 1877, amid a disastrous marriage and an intense correspondence with his patron Nadezhda von Meck, Tchaikovsky built the work around a single idea: Fate. The symphony opens with a striking brass fanfare – “that fateful force which prevents the impulse to happiness from attaining its goal”, as he described it.

That motif returns throughout the work, interrupting moments of lyricism and reappearing dramatically in the finale. Yet the symphony ends in blazing celebration, driven by Russian folk melody and sheer orchestral power.

Romantic Fire moves from struggle to exhilaration – live and on a grand scale.

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