Premiering Anthony Ritchie's Cello Concerto

To give the world première of a work written for you is one of the greatest honours a performer can receive. It carries both privilege and responsibility. You are the first to give the music a voice, and everything you bring to it shapes how it enters the world. The work arrives with no performance history, no established interpretation—only what the composer has imagined, and the joy of bringing it into sound for the very first time. That sense of discovery is one of the things I love most about being a musician.

Anthony Ritchie has been a dear friend and a source of inspiration since I made Aotearoa my home. I was drawn to his music straight away: its warmth, its playfulness, and the way it can hold beauty and wit in the same breath. Many years ago, I asked whether he might one day write a cello concerto. I could never have imagined that quiet conversation would lead us here!

This concerto is deeply personal, carrying traces of Anthony's own life within it. Living with it these past months has been a true joy: four movements, each with its own character, ranging from exuberance and humour to moments of aching lyricism, and a cadenza that is thrillingly alive. Every day I find new details and meaning.

My teacher, Mstislav Rostropovich, devoted his life to expanding the cello repertoire, championing the music of his own time alongside the great classics. That sense of responsibility has stayed with me ever since, and nowhere do I feel it more deeply than in championing the music of this country.

But the discovery does not belong to me alone. When we gather in Dunedin for the première, everyone in the hall will be hearing this music for the very first time. I cannot wait to share the stage with my colleagues and friends in the Dunedin Symphony and with Maestro Brent Stewart, and to bring this concerto to life together.