Nature's Bounty sounds

Thinking back to the "Nature's Bounty" concert on 23 March 2013, the first concert in City Choir Dunedin's very exciting and successful 150th anniversary celebration year, we are pleased to present these recordings from that performance. The Southern Sinfonia provided orchestral support and David Burchell was the musical director and conductor.

A happy coincidence was the celebration in 2013 of the 150th anniversary of the Dunedin Botanic Gardens, and the theme of this concert also reflected that milestone.

For What Can Be More Beautiful? was composed by Christopher Marshall to mark the 150th anniversary of the Dunedin Choral Society (now performing as City Choir Dunedin). Although now living and working in Florida, Christopher Marshall is a New Zealander, and lived in Dunedin for two years while a Mozart Fellow at the University of Otago in 1994-6. When we approached him we mentioned the confluence of the Botanic Garden’s anniversary with our own, and so texts involving natural imagery seemed right for the occasion.


Christopher Marshall's For What Can be More Beautiful? Into the Garden commissioned and premièred by City Choir Dunedin (Photos credit: Ian Thomson)



Christopher Marshall's For What Can be More Beautiful? The Joy of Fruit commissioned and premièred by City Choir Dunedin (Photos credit: Ian Thomson)




Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s cantata Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast 
Tenor: Matthew Wilson
(Photos credit: Ian Thomson)

The text for this cantata, describing the splendours of an American-Indian wedding banquet, is from the well-known epic poem “The Song of Hiawatha” by the American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.