Including Princess Chelsea and Brahmissimo!

SATURDAY OCTOBER 8

Princess Chelsea and O’Lovely Recorded Live at Roundhead Studios (95bFM, 11.00am and Friday, 2.00pm). First up this week it’s North Shore girl Princess Chelsea, aka ex-Brunettes member Chelsea Nikkel, who got her new name after repeatedly complaining about dirty clothes and not enough showers when touring with an earlier band, Teenwolf. Her very cute Monkey Eats Bananas track will sound familiar to those who have seen the “Auckland’s Big Little City” ad on TV. Then it’s O’Lovely, three indie-poppers originally from Christchurch who are in no way related to American porn star Olivia O’Lovely but belong to a musical – and totally non-pornographic – subset known as “shoegazers”. There will be live streaming and podcasts on 95bfm.com and video on this website after October 8. (The first part of this concert will be repeated on Radio New Zealand National, 4.10pm today and Friday, 8.06pm.)

Princess Chelsea, photo Janna Dixon/HoS

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BBC Proms 2011 (Radio New Zealand Concert, 3.00pm). It’s the last week of the BBC 2011 Proms, kicking off (damn you, Rugby World Cup!) with a recital from the Royal Albert Hall by British organist David Goode, Canadian pianist Marc-André Hamelin and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, conducted by Jac van Steen. They’ll be playing works by Rachmaninov, Berkeley, Elgar and Kodály. Other Proms concerts this week: Saturday at 8.00pm, German violinist Christian Tetzlaff is the soloist, with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, conducted by David Robertson, with a programme featuring works by Holst, Birtwistle and Bridge; Sunday at 3.00pm, a proms concert cunningly disguised as an Opera on Sunday feature, this production of Weber’s Der Freischütz features soloists Andrew Kennedy, Sophie Karthäuser, Gidon Saks, Virginie Pochon, Matthew Brook, Luc Bertin-Hugault, Samuel Evans and Robert Davies, with the Monteverdi Chorus and Orchestra Révolutionnaire et Romantique, conducted by John Eliot Gardiner; Sunday at 8.00pm, Dutch violinist Janine Jansen and the Philadelphia Orchestra, conducted by Charles Dutoit, present works by Sibelius, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov and Ravel; Monday at 8.00pm, got your flags ready? It’s the famed Last Night of the Proms, which prompted Guardian critic Erica Jeal to write: “It’s the end of term. The Albert Hall arena is full of well-behaved schoolchildren playing at being naughty.” This concert features British soprano Susan Bullock, Chinese pianist Lang Lang and the BBC Symphony Chorus and Orchestra, conducted by Edward Gardner. Along with a new work by Peter Maxwell Davies, the choral fanfare Musica Benevolens, Lang Lang performs Liszt’s Piano Concerto No 1 and Chopin’s Grande Polonaise Brillante, followed by Bullock – dressed as a Valkryie and wearing a flashing daffodil on her breastplate – belting out Brünnhilde’s Immolation Scene from Wagner’s Götterdämmerung, Rule Britannia, Climb Ev’ry Mountain and You’ll Never Walk Alone. Super!

SUNDAY OCTOBER 9

Composer of the week (Radio New Zealand Concert, 9.00am today and weekdays, and 7.00pm Monday). RNZ Concert features Johannes Brahms (1833-97), the German composer and pianist who was a key figure of the Romantic period. He spent much of his professional life in Vienna but was born into poverty in Hamburg. His musician father encouraged him to play the piano but, as a boy, the younger Brahms was forced by penury to play in dance halls and brothels. It’s said he entertained drunken sailors and over-amorous prostitutes – an experience that apparently had such an effect on him he was never able to form a lasting relationship. If he couldn’t find the ideal woman, he had even more trouble accepting his own abilities: Brahms was such a perfectionist he destroyed many of his early works, including his first 20 attempts at a string quartet. He spent 15 years tinkering with his first symphony and then substituted the original slow movement for another after a few performances. But he was an extremely influential leader of Vienna’s musical scene and his oeuvre includes works for piano, voice and chorus, chamber ensembles and symphonies and, as a virtuoso pianist, he premièred many of his own pieces.

Spectrum (Radio New Zealand National, 12.15pm). Tiny entrepreneurs came out in force during the capital’s recent Wellington on a Plate festival. In Kids’ Market, Jack Perkins follows the first-ever event for budding stallholders run by the Thorndon Farmers’ Market. Jelly bean bracelets, painted pebbles, sticky toffee apples and organic parsley were the order of the day, and the youngsters were encouraged to run everything, from making the goods to pricing, advertising, decorating the stalls and handling money. And with most of the profits going to charity, rampant capitalism among the junior set may not be just around the corner.

WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 12

Music Alive (Radio New Zealand Concert, 8.00pm). Barely have you time to catch your breath from large amounts of promming, and RNZ Concert presents chunky helpings of Brahms – who is also composer of the week. The appropriately titled Brahmissimo! concert series begins, direct from the Michael Fowler Centre in Wellington, with his Symphony No 1 in C Minor (the one he spent 15 years perfecting) and his Piano Concerto No 2 in B flat. It features Canadian-born pianist Diedre Irons and the NZSO, under Pietari Inkinen.

THURSDAY OCTOBER 13

Music Alive (Radio New Zealand Concert, 8.00pm). Brahmissimo! continues, this time featuring gifted Russian violinist Mikhail Ovrutsky in the soloist spot. The programme includes Brahms’s Tragic Overture, his Violin Concerto in D and his Symphony No 2 in D.

FRIDAY OCTOBER 14

Music Alive (Radio New Zealand Concert, 8.00pm). In the third Brahmissimo! concert in the series, New Zealand pianist Michael Houstoun plays Brahms’ Symphony No 3 in F and his Piano Concerto No 1 in D Minor. (The final concert plays next week.)

Classic Concert (Radio New Zealand National, 11.06pm). This new series presents concerts by big names in contemporary music. First up it’s Paul McCartney – Good Evening New York City, in which Macca plays songs from his Beatles and Wings days and from solo projects.