The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra with conductor Holly Mathieson perform:
Tōru Takemitsu Dreamtime
Dorothy Ker The Third Dream
Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique
Holly Mathieson Photo: Martin C Stewart
Dunedin-born conductor Holly Mathieson returned to Aotearoa New Zealand for this, her debut performance with the NZSO. She presents a programme of dreams. Japanese composer Tōru Takemitsu frequently drew influences from outside classical music. Dreamtime is inspired by the Australian Aborigine concept of a mythical time before humans, when Ancestral Spirits walked the earth. Likewise, NZ composer Dorothy Ker explores primordial dreams in The Third Dream, the work "build[ing] organically from delicate stirrings to a physicality of volcanic intensity."
Hector Berlioz's fertile imagination bursts forth in his epic Symphonie Fantastique. Famously depicting the fevered dreams of an opium eating artist, the work takes you on a hallucinatory journey through passionate fantasies, a wild masked ball, and at last to the artist’s descent into the hell of a witches’ Sabbath.
New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Holly Mathieson.
Recorded 14 May 2021, Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington by RNZ Concert.
Fantastique Photo: NZSO
