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NZSM performer's role with Holocaust work honoured

Wednesday 5 September 2012, 5:16AM

By Massey University

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A CD recording commemorating the Holocaust and featuring solo violist Professor Donald Maurice from the New Zealand School of Music has won an international award.

Requiem: The Holocaust, by Israeli composer Boris Pigovat, was recorded to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Babi Yar massacre in September 1941, in which more than 34,000 Jews were executed.

The recording, featuring the Vector Wellington Orchestra, was awarded a ‘Supersonic’ award by Luxembourg classical music magazine Pizzicato.

The Atoll Records disc also includes the first performance of the work outside the Ukraine, featuring Professor Maurice, in 2008. He gave a second performance on the 70th anniversary of the massacre on September 29 last year at the Wellington Town Hall.

Professor Maurice, who lectures in classical performance and musicology at the New Zealand School of Music which is jointly run by Massey University and Victoria University, was also invited to give the first performance of the work last October in Germany at the International Viola Congress in Wurzburg, He was soloist there with Camerata Louis Spohr a symphony orchestra from Dusseldorf.