The final 2020 Globe matinee features Nathan Pinkney and Guy Donaldson

Nathan Pinkney plays viola and violin at the Sunday matinee with pianist Guy Donaldson.

Nathan Pinkney on viola and violin will play in the final 2020 Globe matinee series with pianist Guy Donaldson.

Donaldson says the matinee concerts will finish on a high note with local string player Nathan Pinkney who has been a frequent performer at the Globe concert series despite his youth.

A critic has described one of Pinkney's concerts as being among some of the finest playing he has heard in the history of the concert series.

Pinkney grew up in a musical family in Ashhurst, and completed an electrician apprenticeship before heading to Auckland University in 2017 to study violin.

He is now a fulltime music student.

His competition successes include being a finalist in the National Secondary School Chamber Music Competitions, and a semifinalist at PACANZ, New Zealand's leading competition for young performers.

Tutors Kim Jin and Donald Armstrong have been significant mentors along his musical journey.

Pinkney is presently studying with Stephen Larson at Auckland University and is working towards a professional chamber music career in violin.

Pinkney will be accompanied by well-known Palmerston North pianist Donaldson.

Donaldson received his formative piano instruction from Maurice Collier, and then at Canterbury University with Maurice Till.

In 1984 he studied in London with Paul Hamburger and Roger Vignoles, with whom he had the good fortune to study the featured work on this programme.

He is active in the Manawatū as a teacher, adjudicator, piano soloist, accompanist, chamber music player and music coach, and was for 30 years music director of the Renaissance Singers.

Donaldson says the concert is unashamedly Romantic in spirit, and will begin with Schumann's four Fairy Tale Pictures for viola and piano.

Schumann chose not to disclose the nature of the pictures which were his inspiration, but the contrasting moods – wistful, urgent, frenetic and melancholy – invite the audience's own connections.

Donaldson continues with more Schumann – the Arabeske for solo piano, which was written to his beloved Clara Wieck as an offering while Wieck's father was actively opposing their relationship.

Pinkney then returns to play one of the greatest works for violin - Cesar Franck's challenging sonata for violin and piano.

The 64-year-old Franck was relatively unknown even in France when he wrote this piece, but the young violinist Eugene Ysaye propelled the work and Franck into musical fame.

The work is a technical and musical challenge for both violinist and pianist, and an exciting emotional roller-coaster for the audience.

The concert finishes on a sweet note with the Caprice Viennois by Fritz Kreisler, an Austrian-born American violinist and composer, and regarded as one of the greatest violinists of all time.

This sentimental piece recalls the Vienna of Strauss waltzes.

The Globe Matinee, 2.30pm, November 22. Admission is by donation, recommended from $5.