Kapiti Student Musicians

Sunday 19th May at 2.30pm

Michael Houstoun is so loved by New Zealand audiences that no season seems complete without him.

Michael’s contribution to New Zealand music has been honoured many times over the decades since he was awarded the Turnovsky Prize in 1982. He has received honorary doctorates from Massey University and Victoria University of Wellington, is a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit and a Laureate of the Arts Foundation of New Zealand. For those who turn out in numbers to hear him whenever he plays, those awards represent a big thank you for all the pleasure he has brought them.

We are thrilled to welcome him back to play chamber music with three distinguished colleagues. Violinist Martin Riseley (Head of Strings at the New Zealand School of Music) will be joined by New Zealand Symphony Orchestra principal cellist Andrew Joyce and violist Gwendolyn Fisher* who is visiting New Zealand from the UK for a spell as Associate Principal Viola with the NZSO.  This formidable team will present a programme of sumptuous piano quartets by Gabriel Fauré and Johannes Brahms.

*Andrew Thomson (viola), was planning to perform, but has just had shoulder surgery, so is “on the bench” at the moment!

The great Brahms A Major quartet is a complex masterwork written on a symphonic scale, while Fauré’s first quartet is one of the most popular of French chamber works, sparkling with colour, sophistication and melodic invention.

Sunday 14th April at 2.30pm

New Zealand baritone Julien Van Mellaerts studied at the University of Otago and the International Opera School of the Royal College of Music. In 2017 he won first prizes in both the Kathleen Ferrier Award and the Wigmore Hall-Kohn Foundation Competition. He also won the Maureen Forrester Prize at the 2018 Concours musical international de Montréal. He has a busy career of opera and concert performances and recently sang Schaunard in the NZ Opera production of La Bohème.

Julien is partnered by South African pianist James Baillieu, professor and head of piano accompaniment at the Royal Academy of Music in London. Educated at the University of Cape Town and the Royal Academy of Music, James is the recipient of several prestigious awards and prizes. His concert career has taken him all over Europe, North America and Asia, working with an extensive list of prominent singers including Ian Bostridge, Dame Kiri Te Kanawa and Mark Padmore.

These two remarkable young musicians will bring us two wonderful song-cycles – Schumann’s Dichterliebe and Vaughan Williams’ Songs of Travel, along with a selection of favourite Schubert lieder and some light-hearted songs about New Zealand birds, composed by Gareth Farr to poems by Bill Manhire.

Sunday 17th February at 2.30pm

These two awards closely follow the honour of Germany’s Opus Klassik prize for a CD with Tabea Zimmermann and Jörg Widmann.

Dénes also performs frequently with his wife Izabella Simon in four-hands and two-piano recitals and together they have organised several chamber music festivals. Their concert for us will comprise a first half of duets including some favourite repertoire by Schubert and Debussy, followed in the second half by a rare performance of one of Beethoven’s greatest and most challenging late sonatas, the Hammerklavier.