Reviewed by Peter Simpson
Passion & Mystery
Auckland Philharmonia
Auckland Town Hall
February 15th
Reviewed by Peter Simpson
This was a concert of impassioned music across three centuries. Or four if you count the exquisite Bach encore played by Julian Steckel after his commanding performance of Shostakovich’s Second Cello Concerto (representing the twentieth century), which was preceded by Gemma Peacock’s sonorous White Horses, representing the 21st century and followed by Tchaikovsky’s mighty Symphony No. 6, The Pathétique, representing the nineteenth century.
‘Passion & Mystery’ was the opening concert of the Auckland Philarmonia Orchestra’s 2024 Premier Series, under its capable conductor Giordano Bellincampi.
I am not a musician; I can’t read a musical score or play a musical instrument, so am incapable of informed discrimination when it comes to performances, though I can point to more than half a century of avidly listening to concerts, radio and records as a dedicated consumer of music.
I found this an absorbing and enjoyable concert. All three works are emotionally intense, as was to be expected given the concert’s moniker, ‘Passion and Mystery’, though sufficiently various in musical idiom to avoid monotony. So far as I could tell the orchestra played splendidly throughout and was well directed by the resident conductor. The house was nearly full and the applause was deservedly prolonged.
Gemma Peacocke’s White Horses is a kind of orchestral tone poem, inspired by an extraordinary event in 1937 when a pioneer female New Zealand aviator, Waud Farmar, fell to her death in the ocean. In the words of the composer – a New Zealander working in the United States – ‘Farmar leapt without warning from a bi-plane above Cook Strait…The pilot saw her hit the sea and disappear.’ The pilot said: ‘The sea was pretty rough, with white horses everywhere’. These words provide the clue for Peacocke’s music treatment with lots of ominous rumblings of percussion, and intermittent sharp accents from strings and wind instruments. The sonic range is impressive, from a poignant violin solo to thunderous orchestral climaxes.
German cellist Julian Steckel was at his best in the intense opening Largo of Shostakovich’s sinewy concerto dating from 1966, the year of the composer’s 60th birthday. Like its predecessor, the concerto was written for the great Mistislav Rostropovich. How fortunate the Russian composer was to have such sublime musicians as Rostropovich, David Oistrakh and Svatoslav Richter for whom to write his concerti! Unsurprisingly the score exploits to the full the virtuosic capacities of the instrument, demands which the soloist was clearly capable of meeting with ease and polish.
Tchaikovsky’s last symphony was first performed just nine days after his death in 1893, and it is hard to avoid inferring that he poured his heart and soul into it as a kind of final testament. The music is remarkably various, from the achingly lovely melody of the opening movement, through the delicacy and fire of the middle movements to the surging, sobbing melancholia of the final Adagio. The orchestra sounded magnificent throughout every nuance of sentiment wrung from the composer’s feelings. A cathartic experience altogether for the satisfied audience.
New Zealand Arts Review 