Bach B Minor Mass 2014

Graduate & CBS Choir Haydn 2008

John Ritchie Missa Corpus Christi 2008

Schubert First Mass in F Major 2007

Mozart Requiem 25.8.2013

Internationally renowned opera stars generously contributed to this benefit concert for the new CBS Music Centre. Soprano soloist was Madeline Bender, from New York. Since graduating from the Manhattan School of Music, she has taken leading roles for many opera companies, and appears on DVD under John Eliot Gardiner alongside Magdalena Kozena in the title role of Gluck’s Orpheus and Eurydice. In demand as a concert soloist, she has sung the Bach B Minor Mass with the Handel & Haydn Society; the Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5 with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, and Handel’s Messiah with the Toronto Symphony under Sir Andrew Davis. Simon O’Neill came fresh from Wagner performances at La Scala and the BBC Proms, and left for Tokyo, Berlin and Covent Garden. Paul Whelan, who has sung the title roles of Don Giovanni and Eugene Onegin at the Sydney Opera House, was in NZ for a Stravinsky Soldier’s Tale, and The Flying Dutchman. They were joined by alto soloist Margot Button, a vocal graduate of the Boston Conservatory of Music. A newly refurbished Steinway concert grand piano has replaced the instrument crushed during the earthquake. Played by Michael Lawrence, it was heard for the first time in settings of Ave Maria and the Lord’s Prayer sung by Simon and Paul, and a Rachmaninov Prelude.

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770 - 1827) 

CBS Beethoven Concert   

Christus Introduction Op.85 Recording

Eroica Symphony No. 3 in Eb Op.55

I   Allegro con brio Recording
II  Marcia Funebre: Adagio assai Recording
III Scherzo: Allegro vivace Recording
IV Finale: Allegro molto Recording

The CBS Orchestra presented a free hour-long concert featuring two dramatic works by Beethoven on Sunday 8 March, 2020, at 3 pm in St Mary’s Pro-Cathedral, Manchester Street. His sombre Introduction to Christ on the Mount of Olives preceded the monumental Eroica Symphony No.3. The CBS Orchestra was led by Natalia M. Lomeiko and Musical Director was Don Whelan.

Each work dates from 1803, while Beethoven was confronting his impending deafness. In his only oratorio, Christ on the Mount of Olives, he vividly depicts anguish and ultimate resignation. The relatively brief Introduction Op. 85 functions like an overture to a sacred opera. It establishes a tragic, profound mood with evocative orchestration, including a chilling role for the timpani. To enable a young and challenging composer to be heard, the premiere became part of a marathon presentation of his first two symphonies and third piano concerto to an exhausted Viennese audience.

The famous Eroica Symphony No. 3 in Eb major was written immediately following this concert. Beethoven described it as “the biggest work he had written so far, and added, “I think heaven and earth must tremble beneath us when it is performed.” He had initially hoped that his former hero, Napoleon, would accept the dedication of the new symphony, which was to bear the title Bonaparte, as he saw him as the liberator of the downtrodden, a destroyer of oppression and class distinction, and the driving force for a democratic Europe. But on learning in 1804 that Napoleon had declared himself Emperor, he tore through the paper to destroy the name Bonaparte, and wrote instead: Heroic Symphony composed to celebrate the memory of a great man.

The music is both vigorous and noble, and reshapes the scope and scale of even the greatest symphonies of Haydn and Mozart. Although profound personal grief underpins the massive funeral march which comprises the slow movement, it eventually finds the musical catharsis which was ultimately to lead in his future symphonic creations to a Hymn of Joy.

2023 Marlon Williams Town Hall Concert

The CBS Choir featured at a Christchurch Town Hall concert on Friday, January 27, 2023, as guests of singer-composer Marlon Williams. They sang a selection of favourite choral pieces, chosen from Marlon’s time with the choir, which included touring to the Baltic States, Portugal and Spain.