soloist Diedre Irons
“Technically the Orchestra Wellington strings played with astounding precision… What a concert – yet for all that it must have challenged the nearly 2000 present, it was clapped to the echo, and rightly so.”
New Zealand String Quartet in a pre-concert concert for Orchestra Welington
“…Orchestra Wellington filled the venue and the audience went away well satisfied with their evening’s listening.”
“The orchestral version of the quartet added a certain depth of sound and gravity to the work. The eight double basses enhanced the rich deep notes of the music. Reworking a string quartet into an orchestral piece changed the tone of the original. Passages that sounded like intimate meditations by the violin and the viola in the quartet came through as anthems and chorales by a large choir, altering the character of the piece. To appreciate this quartet played by a whole large string orchestra one had to leave behind the quartet version and think of the piece as an entirely different composition, a culmination of Beethoven’s grand vision.
All credit to Orchestra Wellington for tackling this work and introducing it to its large number of followers, some of whom were probably more familiar with the orchestral than the chamber music repertoire.”
“Marc Taddei is a master programmer who links known and lesser known works in interesting ways.”
“An Orchestra Wellington concert is unlike any other. The programming is stimulating, usually thematically based, but always including something of difference and, occasionally, distinctly zany. This was zany.”