Name: Enemy of the State
Start: 2025-10-18T09:30:00+13:00
Location: Michael Fowler Centre

Enemy of the State spans new music, Romantic lyricism, and one of the most incendiary works in Shostakovich’s career, performed by outstanding guest artists.
The concert opens with the NZ premiere of John Psathas’ Next Planet. Commissioned and premiered by the Tonhalle Düsseldorf GmbH (management company for the Tonhalle Düsseldorf in Germany) and the Düsseldorf Symphony as part of their Green Mondays project, Next Planet was premiered in June 2024 as part of a cycle of twelve “Green Pieces.” Read more about the project and John's work here.
The programme continues with Alexander Glazunov’s Violin Concerto in A minor, a Romantic masterpiece notable for its warmth and lyricism. Composed in 1904, the concerto weaves together heartfelt themes across its uninterrupted movements, culminating in a brilliant solo cadenza leading to to the trumpet calls heralding the final Allegro. Orchestra Wellington is delighted to welcome back Benjamin Baker, violinist and Artistic Director of At the World’s Edge Festival, to perform this remarkable work.
Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, Suite for Soprano and Orchestra, featuring internationally acclaimed lyric soprano Madeleine Pierard, will close the evening. Premiered in January 1934 as a massive success, in early 1936 the Russian newspaper Pravda denounced the opera in an article titled “Muddle Instead of Music,” sending Shostakovich’s life into a tailspin. The work was banned in the Soviet Union for almost thirty years, until 1961. Orchestra Wellington Music Director Marc Taddei has crafted a suite tracing the journey of the opera’s protagonist, Katerina, from isolation and passion to betrayal and despair, combining arias and orchestral interludes into a concentrated symphonic portrait. Alongside the forces of Orchesta Wellington, complemented by one of Wellington's very own A-grade brass bands, Pierard’s powerful voice brings Shostakovich’s heroine vividly to life, illuminating both the work’s humanity and the reasons it provoked such outrage.