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Under the direction of NZSO Concertmaster Vesa-Matti Leppänen, the orchestra’s performance of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons was completely coherent – the poetry, the soloists, the orchestra,
New Zealand Symphony Orchestra directed by Vesa-Matti Leppänen with Anna van der Zee, Malavika Gopal, Simeon Broom and Alan Molina (all violin). Music by Vivaldi and Piazzolla. Wellington College, May 8. Reviewed by Max Rashbrooke. I had low expectations, I’ll admit: what was yet another performance of
Four Seasons going to tell me about this well-worn piece? Plenty of things, as it turned out. Things were livened up from the outset by readings from the poems that had originally accompanied Vivaldi’s composition. Another nice touch was to have one soloist per season, each of them drawn from the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra’s ranks.