Celebration

Our first concert folds our 2027 dance theme into a celebration of our beloved Te Whare Whakarauika, Wellington Town Hall’s re-opening.

We invite you to experience its legendary acoustics which allow everything from pinprick delicacy and diaphanous transparency to soul-shaking power.

Kicking off the season is Iberia. Immediately you’ll hear how the Town Hall captures every nuance of Claude Debussy’s orchestral textures evoking the moods and colours of Spain: the shimmer of guitars, alluring dance rhythms, joyful processions on distant streets.

Equally colourful is Respighi’s Church Windows. Imagine light refracted through stained glass in these musical depictions of four dramatic Biblical themes. Again, one senses processions and ceremonial movement, and finally awe as we invoke the full impact of the Town Hall’s acoustics with the reawakening of Wellington Town Hall’s long-silent organ.

Then the Orpheus Choir Wellington joins us for Leoš Janáček’s Glagolitic Mass, a stunning work requiring a double chorus as well as a large orchestra and soloists. The Town Hall’s organ features again in a rhapsodic solo. Hearing this rarely performed masterpiece in the Town Hall will be unforgettable.

Janáček said that for his Mass, his cathedral was “the enormous grandeur of mountains beyond which stretched the open sky …  the scent of moist forests my incense.”