Saturday night was the final of the National Concerto Competition in the Christchurch Town Hall. This is an event where New Zealand’s young migrants often succeed. In the final, three of the best young musicians play a concerto with the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra. In the past few years, finalists have been Chinese and Korean as well as European and Maori New Zealanders. This year, two of the three finalists were born in other countries and the third was a New Zealander of mixed ethnicity.
Alex Lomeiko played first. She chose Mendelssohn’s Concerto in E minor for Violin. She was born in Russia in 1991 and came to New Zealand in 1996. Her parents both play in the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra. The second competitor was Yoshiko Tsuruta. She was born in Japan in 1984 and came to New Zealand in 2004 to study music at the New Zealand School of Music in Wellington. She played a Concerto for Marimba and Orchestra by a Brazilian composer, Rosauro. The third finalist, Yuuki Bouterey-Ishida, was born in Christchurch in 1993, to a European mother and Japanese father. All three musicians have already won prizes both here and overseas: Alex in Europe, Yoshiko and Yuuki in Japan.
The winner on Saturday was Yoshiko Tsuruta on the marimba. The marimba is like a xylophone, with a wooden keyboard on the top and tubes underneath to make a rich sound. It was about 2m long. Yoshiko played it with four sticks which are called mallets. They have a small rubber ball on the end. She could choose from a number of mallets, some soft and some harder, and she changed mallets from time to time. She had two in each hand so that she could play four notes together. She looked like a dancer as her whole body moved to play the keys, stretching from the top notes right down to the lower notes.
This was the 41st National Concerto Competition. It started in Christchurch in 1967 and many of the winners in those 41 years have had careers in music. The competition is divided into piano one year and other instruments the following year. The competitors start in December, playing one movement of a concerto to a piano accompaniment, then six semi-finalists are chosen and then three finalists. These finalists then have three months to prepare the whole concerto and this time they play in a concert hall with an orchestra to a large audience. The programme is also recorded for radio. |