Saturday Morning with Kim Hill (Radio New Zealand National, 8.10am). The Listener’s Jim Pinckney called his music “magnificent miserablism”, and he certainly looks glum in his videos, but let’s hope itinerant Kiwi artist Delaney Davidson is cheered by his chat with Kim Hill. Davidson divides his time between Lyttelton and Europe (mainly Switzerland), and his life on the road has brought him joy and depression in equal measures, if his songs are anything to go by.
John Lennon and Yoko Ono, 1980
Liam Finn/Popstrangers Recorded Live at Roundhead Studios (95bFM, 11.00am and Friday, 2.00pm). Finn the Younger is pretty familiar with his dad’s Roundhead Studios, having recorded both his full-length albums, I’ll be Lightning and this year’s FOMO, there. Today he gets to show what he has been up to lately. Let’s hope he plays Cold Feet. It’s the cutest pop song I’ve ever heard. You wouldn’t call Auckland band Popstrangers cute. Apparently, you’d call them alt/grunge/punk or you’d call them Adam, Dave and Joel. There will be live streaming and podcasts on 95bfm.com and video on the Listener website.
SUNDAY DECEMBER 11Composer of the Week (Radio New Zealand Concert, 9.00am today and weekdays, and 7.00pm Monday). RNZ Concert focuses on Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741), who is best known for composing violin concertos The Four Seasons, which have become something of a classical cliché through overexposure, the Venice-born composer, virtuoso violinist and priest is now recognised as one of the great Baroque figures of the age. His instrumental concertos are his chief musical legacy, but he also wrote sacred choral works and over 40 operas.
aimRenderAd(300, 250, '300X250','ContentRect','/POS=POS2'); if(!$.browser.msie){ ContentRect_frame = $("#ContentRect")[0]; ContentRect_frame.src = ContentRect_frame.src; }Spectrum (Radio New Zealand National, 12.15pm). In Under the Mountain and with more than a slight nod towards Maurice Gee’s classic story, Lisa Thompson travels to Auckland’s moody and mysterious volcanic peak Rangitoto. She meets not aliens in ill-fitting suits but descendants of the island’s once-thriving bach community from the 1920s and 30s. The Depression-era digs were wonderfully makeshift – cobbled together with whatever materials could be spared – but most were demolished after the prohibition of further building or renovation from 1937. From a high of 140 baches, there are now just 34, and these are being preserved by the Rangitoto Island Historic Conservation Trust, which seems a bit counterintuitive, does it not?
Opera on Sunday (Radio New Zealand Concert, 3.00pm). Today’s work comes courtesy of Composer of the week Antonio Vivaldi. It’s Ottone in Villa, his first opera, which premiered in 1713. This 2010 recording features Sonia Prina, Roberta Invernizzi, Veronica Cangemi and Julia Lezhneva, with early music group Il Giardino Armonico, conducted by Giovanni Antonini. It’s set in ancient Rome, but the story is your stock standard opera romance: “A is in love with B, who fancies C, who dresses up as a man because she’s in love with D”, but it’s a comedy so you needn’t worry about Caligula types doing dreadful things to their relatives.
The Sunday Feature: (Radio New Zealand National, 4.07pm). Today it’s part two of the Royal Society of New Zealand’s three-part series, Talking Heads 2011, entitled Inside Out: The Chemistry of Food, Sex and Ageing. In Christchurch at the University of Canterbury, Kim Hill and visiting Canadian science author Joe Schwarcz ask: Are cows more trustworthy than chemists? Joining them for a panel discussion will be Christchurch-based academics Ian Shaw, Michael Edmonds and Margreet Vissers.
Blue Smoke: The Birth of New Zealand Pop (Radio New Zealand Concert, 7.00pm). Chris Bourke is back with more fascinating insights into our musical history with Blue Smoke: The Birth of New Zealand Pop, an adaptation of his award-winning book. In part two of the series – Beat Groups, Bobby Soxers and Bohemians – he delves into covers of hits of the time, early guitar bands, teenage pop and folk singers.
MONDAY DECEMBER 12Music Alive (Radio New Zealand Concert, 8.00pm). Who better to interpret Russian composer Rachmaninov than a fellow countryman? Nikolai Demidenko is the pianist, the Christchurch Symphony is the orchestra and Tom Woods is the chap with the baton. This concert, recorded in Christchurch’s Aurora Centre in August, features Don Juan by Richard Strauss and two pieces by Rachmaninov: his Symphony No 2 and Piano Concerto No 2. The concerto is dedicated to the composer’s therapist, Nikolai Dahl, who helped him through the crippling depression he suffered when his first symphony was savaged by the audience and critics alike.
FRIDAY DECEMBER 16Lennon – the Final Interview Special (Radio New Zealand National, 11.06pm). It’s eerie to think the guys who conducted this interview – only a few hours before John Lennon died – had had an encounter with his killer, Mark David Chapman, earlier that day. This two-part special includes that historic last chat, which Lennon and Yoko Ono gave in their apartment in New York’s Dakota Building on December 8, 1980, music from Lennon’s solo years, Beatles songs and the thoughts and memories of the interview team (Dave Sholin, Laurie Kaye, Ron Hummel and Bert Keane) 30 years later.
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