The Curtain Raiser

Lamb & Hayward Masterworks: The Curtain Raiser kicks off the 2025 season with a bang, with music by Scottish composer Anna Meredith, described as “one of the most exciting compositional catalysts of our time.” Equally at home in acoustic and electronic music, her work Nautilus was originally an electronic track, and audiences can expect rhythmic drive and excitement.

Ōtautahi audiences will also be treated to work by homegrown composers Salina Fisher and Jerome Kavanagh Poutama, who lead us into a beautiful soundscape of Aotearoa. This piece honours Papatūānuku (earth mother) as the bearer of all life, and centres instruments/voices that are closely connected to the natural world. Papatūānuku heroes the mahi of Jerome, who plays 19 different taonga puoro throughout a work that artfully weaves in orchestral texture and colour. The review from its 2023 premiere described how “one marveled at the hushed beauty he coaxed from various flutes.”

Rachmaninov’s epic second symphony acts as a counterbalance to the concert’s first half. A cornerstone of the repertoire ever since hitting the concert stage in 1908, this is the ideal live orchestral experience: sometimes stormy and brooding, sometimes radiant and soaring, always powerful and full of feeling.

With thanks to PKF Goldsmith Fox, CSO Soloist Partner.