Donald Maurice
Professor of Music
MMus Wash, CertAdvStudies Banff, AdvCert Guildhall, PhD Otago, FTCL, LRSM
 Donald Maurice is Professor at the New Zealand School of Music. He performs regularly as viola soloist, chamber musician and conductor and has premiered many New Zealand works, including Anthony Ritchie’s Viola Concerto. Since 1993 he has given recitals and presentations at over a dozen International Viola Congresses in Germany, England, Iceland, Canada, the USA and Australia.
In 2008 he gave the first non-European performance with the Vector Wellington Orchestra, of the Holocaust Requiem by Israeli composer, Boris Pigovat, to commemorate the 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht “… throughout can be heard the plangent keening of the solo viola, a part of huge virtuosity magnificently played by Donald Maurice, who knew how to exploit the instrument’s full tonal palette” (Roger Wilson - NZ Listener).
[The performance was recorded and released by Atoll Records on CD in late 2010 – a full review of this CD published by internationally renowned Fanfare magazine can be viewed here.]
Donald reprised his role as soloist for this work in two performances in late 2011:
with the NZSM Orchestra on the September 29, 2011 – the actual 70th Anniversary of the Babi Yar massacre for which the work was written – and for the work's first performance Germany on October 15, 2011 as part of the International Viola Society's 2011 Congress in Würzburg.
In 2009 he gave the prestigious William Primrose Memorial Concert in Utah and in September 2011 will perform a programme of Australasian and Romanian music at the George Enescu Festival in Bucharest.
He has been awarded the Silver Alto Clef by the International Viola Society for service to the viola, honorary life membership by the American Viola Society, and is on the inaugural Australia and New Zealand Viola Society Roll of Honour.
His solo and chamber music discography includes works by Beethoven, Elmsly, Hill, Platt, Ritchie and Strauss. With the New Zealand Piano Quartet he has recorded for Naxos an all-Beethoven CD and for Kiwi Pacific he has recorded Anthony Ritchie’s Viola Sonata. He has an ongoing project with the Dominion String Quartet to record for Naxos, Alfred Hill’s complete string quartets on six CDs. The first CDs have received international acclaim with CD Universe listing them as best sellers. “Leave it to Naxos to come up with some terrific chamber music by a composer most people in the Northern Hemisphere have never heard of … This initial volume in Naxos' new survey of his string quartets (he wrote seventeen) gives us the first three… The Dominion Quartet of New Zealand plays up a storm in all three selections, making a strong case for Hill's music.” (Bob McQuiston - Classical Lost and Found)
As well as articles on a range of topics, Donald has had books published on Béla Bartók and Alfred Hill. “Bartók's Viola Concerto - The Remarkable Story of his Swansong” (Oxford University Press) has become recognized as an authoritative text and is also available on-line. “Donald Maurice's book is an important addition to the field of Bartók research. It can be recommended to all who deal with the multiplicity of issues related to Bartók studies, general musicological studies of the compositional process (sketches, drafts, revisions), performance practice, history of the concerto genre, and other issues pertaining to practical and scholarly questions.” (Elliott Antokoletz – Music and Letters). In 1997 he was awarded a PhD from the University of Otago for his dissertation on this work.
His publication of “The Leipzig Diary - Alfred Hill” has introduced a previously unavailable account of the Leipzig Conservatorium and social commentary during the years 1887-1891. His viola and piano transcription of Enescu’s “Violin and Piano Sonata No 3 – in the Romanian Folk Character” was published by Enoch & Cie, Paris, and he has performed it in the USA, Australia and New Zealand. Comus Editions, UK has published his violin and viola transcriptions of Porumbescu’s “Balada”.
His viola teachers included Nannie Jamieson at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Max Rostal at Aldeburgh, William Primrose at Banff, and Donald McInnes at the University of Washington.
Contact details
phone: +64 4 463 5850
room: 103, 94 Fairlie Terrace, Kelburn Campus
email: donald.maurice@nzsm.ac.nz
External links
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Last Updated:
January 26, 2012
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