Daily News Channel
Thursday evening’s Auckland Philharmonia proved to be a study in contrasts, not just in terms of the programme but also in terms of the performances. Subtitled A New Age, the APO continued its exploration of music of the early 20th century with works by Debussy, Glazunov and Schoenberg.
A journalist — Steve Lopez of the Los Angeles Times — meets a homeless guy on the street playing Beethoven on the last two strings on a fiddle. He’s not performing for the public. If he has an audience in mind at all, it’s the German composer — he’s placed himself in the shadow of Beethoven’s statue in Pershing Square in Los Angeles
Director Joe Wright’s The Soloist is a deeply empathetic exploration of mental illness and a winning showcase for the talents of its two stars, Robert Downey Jr. and Jamie Foxx.