Tag: classical-music

Categories
Reviews, News and Commentary

Bach & Bruckner in Contrast

Review by Peter Simpson

David Fray

Bach & Bruckner

Auckland Philharmonia

Auckland Town Hall

May 2

Reviewed by Peter Simpson

The APO’s recent Bach & Bruckner concert was a study in extraordinary contrasts. The Bach pieces: the Harpsichord Concerto No. 5 in F
Minor, BWV 1056 and, Harpsichord Concerto No. 4 in A Major, BWV 1055, date from his Leipzig years, probably around 1740. Bruckner’s unfinished last Symphony No. 9 dates from the 1890s – a 150 year gap between them into which almost all classical and Romantic music falls.


The first contrast was one of scale. For the Bach, a dozen or so stringed instruments clustered around not an antiquated harpsichord, for which the music was written and first performed on, but a shiny black concert grand, looking vast and sleek, like an elephant on the stage surrounded by pygmies.

For the Bruckner after the interval the stage filled up with a crowd of
musicians; I’m not sure exactly how many; my attempts to count them always broke down, but it must have been close to 100, certainly at least 80. In the numerous climaxes – Bruckner’s music often seems composed almost entirely of crescendos and decrescendos – they made the loudest noise I’ve ever heard in a concert hall (at least since Bruce Springsteen’s E-
Streetband drove me out of the Arts Centre in Ottawa fifty years ago); it left me with ringing ears for some time after the finale.

Then there is the matter of time. The concert began at 7.30 with the two Bach concerti. By 8 o’clock, they were all over; all six movements (three for each piece) together with pauses, applause and encore, took less than half an hour (9 minutes 17 second, and 13 minutes, 40 seconds, respectively, according to one recording). By contrast, the Bruckner stretches out to well over an hour in most recordings (Bernard Haitink’s is 67 minutes long), with each of the outer movements taking almost half-an-hour and about 10 minutes for the intervening scherzo.


French soloist, David Fray, born in 1981, has recorded much of Bach’s keyboard music including the concerti. BBC Music described one such recording: ‘Fray’s command of colour and imaginative highlighting is intoxicating, and there is a freshness which makes for indisputably
rewarding listening’. I couldn’t have said it better myself. His playing was as lean and elegant as his person, especially in the lovely melody over pizzicato strings in the slow movement of BWV 1056.


The Bruckner 9th Symphony is sometimes described as a ‘magnificent torso’ of a work, in that it remains uncompleted, the composer having left only sketches of the fourth movement. Even so it seems a shapely structure – I found myself thinking of Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia in Barcelona – with the two vast evenly balanced outer movements joined by the comparatively brief and frenetic scherzo. In my notes I scribbled ‘glorious and sonorous horns suspended over shimmering beds of strings’ and ‘the sensation of bathing in an ocean of sound’.

Replacement conductor Karl-Heinz Steffens, who stood in for the previously advertised Johannes Fritzsch, who was forced to withdraw because of an injury, appeared in total command of music and musicians and had the APO sounding magnificent.

Categories
Reviews, News and Commentary

The NZSO’s Mahler 5

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

Gemma New

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Mahler 5

Auckland Town Hall

April 6

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

The opening work on the Mahler  programme was Salina Fisher’s “Kintsugi” which was originally commissioned  by the NZ trio. This augmented work relates to the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery and dusting the new work with gold.

The music focussed on the gaps in the pottery and the broken fragments of the pieces, highlighting the delicacy of the process as the pieces were slowly assembled.

The music seemed to describe the colours, textures and contours of the bowl or vase with Bridget Douglas’s flute describing curvaceous shapes. The orchestra then picked out the seams of the material bonding the broken shards and the shimmering gold.

While describing the physical changes in the pottery the work with its delicate, brittle sounds acted as a metaphor the ability of humans to mends broken bodies and damaged minds.

The American composer Adam Schoenberg’s Percussion Concerto “Losing Earth” was a dazzling  work inspired the climate catastrophe threatening our natural world with musical images of cities being inundated by rising oceans.

Jacob Nissly Image NZSO/Jono Tucker

The work opened with the sounds of gunshots from drums which were placed around the auditorium. These sporadic salvos, warnings of a present danger were followed by subterranean groaning of the horns which also suggested looming disaster. This was followed by collisions of the strings and horns against the percussion section.

The audiences was then treated  to a remarkable display from Jacob Nissly the soloist who is the San Francisco Symphony’s Principal Percussionist. From  his first appearance at the front  of the hall playing a snare drum he combined the style of a professional percussion player and that of an outlandish rock band drummer.

At his disposal was an array of instruments; drums, gongs marimba, wood blocks and cymbals with which he and the orchestra created the images of an encroaching ocean with the murmuring strings and brass backgrounding Nissly’s s sonic wonderland. This all ended with his making one final display using a spinning Roto Sound cymbal which emitted an eerie sound as the earth-like globe spun to its whispering end.

Where “Losing Earth” addressed a crucial time in the physical nature of our world , Mahler’s Fifth Symphony addressed a crucial time in the composer’s personal world. The work was written at time when he had  a near death experience, his career was blossoming but there many detractors and it was also the time he met future wife.  It is these personal and psychological issues the fears, anxieties and pleasures of his life which form the basis of the work and we were presented with the man and his attempts to understand and explore his inner psychological struggles, endeavourimg to express himself through his music in a way few other composers have  managed to achieve.

While it is an autobiographical work exploring the composer’s personality, there are parallel themes as he depicts narratives, landscapes and other emotion states.

The measure of a great performance is the way in which these aspects of the composer’s life are realized by the conductor and the orchestra. Conductor Gemma New and the NZSO certainly achieved it with an intelligent and emotional performance.

From the opening trumpet blast to the final triumphant conclusion New was firmly in control of the orchestra, understanding the drama, inventions and contrasts of the music. She seemed by turns, a battling duellist, a lithe dancers and meticulous guide. Subtle nuances were made evident and individual instruments were allowed to shine. Even the long silences between the movements became part of the music, allowing the audience to reflect on each of the previous movements.

New managed to give the blaring, brass opening funereal march a sense of desolation while the singing strings provided a sense of optimism. This  romantic reflective mood depicted the man trapped between despair and hope.

In the second movement New seemed to be battling the ferocious sounds of the orchestra and the nightmarish, reckless drama of the music before it morphed into quiet reverie, bringing out nuances and subtleties that seemed to explore the tragedy and triumphs of human and personal history and she allowed the interweaving of the solo violin, the brass and the strings to give the work an intense melancholy.

The final two movements, which included the famous adagio for strings which is considered to be something of a love letter to his wife Alma Schindler, were delivered perfectly filled with an aching sense of love and loss.

The final movement was filled with changing moods, alive with bright woodwinds and brass. New led the orchestra  in a brilliantly controlled finale where the doors of perception open and the funeral tones of much of the work are replaced by more exultant sounds offering hope and renewal.

Categories
Reviews, News and Commentary

APO’s Other Worlds

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

Shuiyeon Sung

Other Worlds

Auckland Philharmonia

Auckland Town Hall

March 28

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

It’s easy to appreciate why Sibelius’s Symphony No 2 has been  seen as a programmatic work conveying idea about patriotism and nationalism. At the time of writing the symphony the Russian  occupiers were restricting the use of the Finnish language and attempting to change the nature of Finnish society.

So, with this symphony, while the Finnish language was being stifled  Sibelius was allowing the Finnish voice to be heard through music  which reflected on Finnish language, landscape  and history.

He attempted to convey in music what the painting, ”The Attack” by the Finnish artist Edward Isto did visually. Painted at the same time it illustrated the feelings of many Finns. The work depicts a double headed eagle, representing the Russian state, attempting to snatch a book of laws from a while clad female.

Edward Isto, The Attack

The opening movement with its stirring blasts of the woodwinds and horns followed by the surging strings provided musical images of landscape which conveyed ideas of Finnish Nationalism.  Later when the vigorously plucked cellos contrasted with the deep sounds of the  bassoons there  a sense of personal loneliness or struggle.

The notion of the individual alone in the landscape and awe at their surroundings which is present throughout the work was also apparent in the opening work on the programme, Mendelssohn’s “Hebrides Overture” which also linked landscape, history and myth.

Later the militaristic sounds of a rampant orchestra ended with  a triumphant anthem all this sounding like  a great storm  and its aftermath.

The work was by turns  nostalgic, revolutionary and celebratory with repeated themes evoking a call to arms and a new dawn.

The newest work on the programme saw a trio of South Korean artists  on stage with violinist Inmo Yang playing Unsuk Chin’s 2001 work  “Violin Concerto No 1“ and the orchestra conducted by Shuiyeon Sung.

Inmo Yang

Unsuk Chin’s Violin Concerto is one of her most famous works and has won a number of awards and is  fine example of cross-cultural music where the experimental and the traditional are fused.

Inmo Yang backed by a percussion rich orchestra – marimba, gongs, harps, bells and xylophone  gave an extraordinary performance.

From the first bars of the first movement with his rapid bowing, he attempted to dominate the orchestra in what seemed at times like a competition.

His almost dementated, playing and the  abstract sequences he produced contrasted with the more controlled playing of the orchestra with many of the sequences sounding  as though Yang and the orchestra were responding to  different musical scores.

His high-pitched sounds worked well with the percussion instruments producing otherworldly feelings and soft disturbing moments. There were also random moments of intimacy as well as magical sounds full of exuberant colour as he joined with and riffed off the various percussion instruments.

In the final movement his dexterous playing  set the stage for  a battle between violin and orchestra where their sounds would combine and then separate with a massive sonic, Doppler Effect.

Chin’s violin concerto requires a player who has focus, exceptional technical skills and understanding of the work. Inmo Yang possessed all those qualities.

Future APO concerts

April 11th

Viennese Feast

Conductor Christoph Altstaedt
Violin Amalia Hall

Brahms Variations on a Theme by Haydn
Haydn Violin Concerto No.1
Mahler (arr. Britten) What the Wild Flowers Tell Me
Schubert Symphony No.6 ‘Little C major’

May 2

Bach & Bruckner

Conductor Johannes Fritzsch
Piano David Fray

J.S. Bach Keyboard Concerto No.5, BWV 1056
J.S. Bach Keyboard Concerto No.4, BWV 1055
Bruckner Symphony No.9

To subscribe or follow New Zealand Arts Review site – www.nzartsreview.org.

The “Follow button” at the bottom right will appear and clicking on that button  will allow you to follow that blog and all future posts will arrive on your email.

Or go to https://nzartsreview.org/blog/, Scroll down and click “Subscribe”

Categories
Reviews, News and Commentary

Barton and Brodsky

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

Auckland Arts Festival

Barton and Brodsky

Auckland Concert Chamber

May 22

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

It seems misleading  to describe the didgeridoo as a primitive instrument. The sounds it makes fit well within the scope of much contemporary music, there is  complexity to their playing and they have an extraordinary musical history which parallels the history of many European instruments.

The instrument’s voice also seems to connect with the land and the history of the Aboriginal  people with a deep spirituality .

The opening of the recent Barton and Brodsky concert heard that voice as  the rumble of  the didgeridoo  welled up from the underworld to fill the Auckland Concert Chamber. This was didgeridoo of William Barton joining the string quarter for a remarkable concert of music, where the instrument contributed to several of the works.

Barton performed in Peter Sculthorpe’s “String Quartet No 11 “Jabiru Dreaming” which describes the Australian landscape and its animal life. His fitful and variable  breathing  gave a sense of the breath of life which giving soul to the land, and the sharp bursts of sound mapped out the patterns of landscape and geology. The strings contributed sharp shrill sounds of bird life and the murmurs of the bush.

In” Minjerribah” by Robert Davidson which paints a picture of the North Stradbroke Island Bartons didgeridoo again  provided a sense of the timeless landscape while the strings created  an almost romantic vision with evocative sounds of bird life,  the shrill of cicadas, waves churning over beaches, deep blue skies and sun.

Barton also made a major contribution to the concert with his own composition “Square Circles beneath the Red Desert Sand” which he introduced walking from the rear of the hall channelling the spirits and the song lines of Australia, the sounds of his  voice echoed by the strings.  His singings took the form of a ritual, like the chants of many religions. Here along with the savage strings of the quartet, the sounds of the European instruments and didgeridoo showed the power of music to provide memory and narrative  reaching across cultures.

Before the two works featuring the didgeridoo, the quartet played Henry Purcell’s early “Fantasia No 5 in D Minor” with all the elegance the work requires with Paul Cassidy’s viola adding a deep sonorous tone.

This finely crafted work was in marked contrast to the main work on the programme, “Janacek’s  String Quartet No 11”. This work is subtitled “Intimate Letters” and is a musical representation of some 700 letters sent between Janáček and Kamila Stösslová which represented the composer’s intense emotions in  that doomed  relationship.

Passages of the work were played at not much more than a whisper which were then punctuated by dramatic piecing sounds from the strings as though representing the turmoil of  the composer’s mind. In many of the sequences, violinist Krysia Ocostowicz led the group with her insistent playing and in the final movement played with a fevered urgency mirroring that of the composer.

The group also  played Stravinsky’s “Three Pieces for String Quartet” which was written after his ballet music for Petrushka and owes much to folk music , the carnival and snippets recalling Latin chants.

They also played Salina Fisher’s “Torino – Echoes of the Putorino”. The putorino is  a Māori instrument which can produce sounds as varied as a trumpet or a flute which the group were able to replicate. But while they were able to produce the sounds of the instrument, they were also imitating the sounds of the New Zealand bush and the native birds with the bright strings achieving the sound of several birds including the kiwi.

With Andrew Ford’s “String Quartet No 7: Eden Ablaze” which was a memorial and requiem to the Australian bush fires of 2019 / 20 the group captured the drama of the event, visions of the devastated landscape and the flight of the animals.  There were surging sounds of the combined strings as well high-pitched sounds of distress while  the didgeridoo provided a plaintive background.

To subscribe or follow New Zealand Arts Review site – www.nzartsreview.org.

The “Follow button” at the bottom right will appear and clicking on that button  will allow you to follow that blog and all future posts will arrive on your email.

Or go to https://nzartsreview.org/blog/, Scroll down and click “Subscribe”

Categories
Reviews, News and Commentary

Beyond Words: a lament, a reflection and a celebration

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

Oum with conductor Fawzi Haimor and the NZSO Image Jono Tucker

Auckland Arts Festival

Beyond Words

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Auckland Town Hall

March 10

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

The “Beyond Words” concert which had its third performance following its premiere in Christchurch and a performance in Wellington was a collaboration to promote unity and peace through music and to honour the lives lost in Ōtautahi Christchurch on 15 March 2019.

Conducted by Fawzi Haimor the concert featured the Moroccan vocalist OUM  El Ghait Benessahraoui and Cypriot/Greek oud player Kyriakos Tapakis.

Vocalist Abdelilah Rharrabti, saz player Liam Oliver, vocalist and daf player Esmail Fathi, oud player Kyriakos Tapakis, vocalist Oum and composer John Psathas [From Wellington concert] image Jono Tucker

The concert also featured  works by the American Valerie Coleman, Reza Vali, Arvo Pärt and the world premiere of a new work by the New Zealand composer John Psathas.

Psathas’ “Ahlan wa Sahlan”, composed in collaboration with OUM and Tapakis, uses the Arabic welcome to let people know they are in a place where they belong. The work fused together musical styles from Eastern and Western music traditions.

The work features energetic and dramatic sounds with subtle changes of texture and moods, providing a background for the two soloists OUM  El Ghait Benessahraoui and Kyriakos Tapakis.

The composer as previously demonstrated his ability to compose celebratory anthems having written works for the ceremonies at 2004 Athens Olympics and with this work there is sense of the music being both a lament, a reflection and a celebration. With waves of shifting percussive and evocative sounds

OUM was resplendent in her shimmering gown and elaborate head covering  Her voice with its roots in Morocco  and in the tradition of Egyptian singers of the 1930’s like Umm Kulthum drifted and soared above the orchestra’s tapestry of eastern sounds along with answering voice of Tapakis’s oud.

Her singing and movements at times suggested she was in a trance-like state while at other times she exuded an emotional intensity  and in her singing  “Hijra” she sounded like a French chaunteuse. Later there were passages where her voice was close to over-elaborate crooning.

Tapakis provided a riveting performance where he played together with Xylophone and timpani in a filmic sounding section filled with percussive sounds

The other major work in the programme was Arvo Pärt‘s Silouan’s Song which is  fine example of the composer’s low-key minimalism with simple repetition and contemplation sequences of notes.

This was a reflective piece which connected contemporary music with Medieval plainchant and Eastern mystical  music and the various sections were stressed by the meditative silences between them giving the work a ritualistic feel.

In the first part of the programme there were five shorter works including a traditional work sung by Hasbi Rabbi and Molle Mamad Jan which had an achingly unsettling melodic line as well as a beguiling performance by OUM.

There was also  contemplative, work by the Iranian Reza Vali which was filled with despondency and funeral sounds hinting at a vision of paradise.

Kyriakos Tapakis performed his own work “Mantilatos” which was filled with extraordinary sounds and rhythms. While the NZSO accompanied  him, emphasising much of the work it would have been more interesting if he had been able to play as a soloist.

A major disappointment with the programme was the lack of English translations for the various vocal segments. Presumably the lyrics were relevant to the spirit of the event and even though the concert was one that was “beyond words”  with the music conveying emotional and spiritual dimensions it was pity the audience was not able to  appreciate the greater depth which would have come from a knowledge of the word.

To subscribe or follow New Zealand Arts Review site – www.nzartsreview.org.

The “Follow button” at the bottom right will appear and clicking on that button  will allow you to follow that blog and all future posts will arrive on your email.

Or go to https://nzartsreview.org/blog/, Scroll down and click “Subscribe”

Categories
Reviews, News and Commentary

The APO’s colourful “Italian Style”

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

Franz Schubert View of Florence

In the Italian Style

Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra

Auckland  Town Hall

February 29

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

In the early nineteenth century it was fashionable to do a Grand Tour with Italy as the prime destination. Artists, writers and composers all sought to travel there to find inspiration.

The APO’s “In The Italian Style” presented works by three composers who were themselves were enthralled by various aspects of Italian music, history and landscape.

The first work on the programme was Schubert’s Overture in C “In the Italian Style” which was not a response to Italy itself but rather to the interest in Italian music at the time , notably the exoticism  of Rossini.  Schubert’s impressionist depiction of Italy conveys images of street life, dances and the leisurely stroll through classical  ruins captures the energy, colours and contrasts of his invented Italy which is a measure of the composer’s ability to convey images and sight he had never seen. The work also shows the young eighteen-year-old trying to move his compositions out of the traditions of Viennese music  of the time.

Mendelssohn was twenty-one when he travelled to Italy where he was captivated  by the art, architecture and landscape. When he was given a commission, he used his impressions of the country as the basis of his Symphony No 4 “The Italian”. While he had been despairing of Italian concert music, he was taken with local Neapolitan folk dance styles like the saltarello. This influence is seen in the final wild, breakneck movement which captures the drama of the dance and Mendelssohn’s vision of Italy.

The first three movements were filled with dramatic contrasts,-  massive sounds  which suggested the grandeur of the Alps as well as softer sounds which evoked contemplation  of art works and architecture.

Conductor Giordana Bellincampi displayed his astute conducting skills throughout the concert, at times creating dynamic waves of sound while at other times having orchestra whisper as in the opening of the second movement which depicts dawn breaking with bursts of sunlight. 

The major work on the programme was Hector Berlioz’s Harold in Italy with Robert Ashworth and his viola taking on the  character of Harold, the heroic figure based loosely on Byron’s Childe Harold, a wanderer who observes scenes of Italian life.

The four movements depicting outdoor scenes from various parts of the country were all derived from the composer’s experiences while travelling in Italy.

While the work is the composer’s personal response to Italy there seem to be reference to Byron’s epic poem throughout the work as in the references to Florence, its landscape and history.

A softer feeling for her fairy halls.

   Girt by her theatre of hills, she reaps

   Her corn, and wine, and oil, and Plenty leaps

   To laughing life, with her redundant horn.

   Along the banks where smiling Arno sweeps,

   Was modern Luxury of Commerce born,

And buried Learning rose, redeemed to a new morn.

Berlioz infuses his music with evocative imagery – the drama of the mountains, the softness of the light and the richness of the country’s art and history.

Robert Ashworth’s muted viola sounds helped paint an initial picture of the world-weary traveller but there were also touches of wonderment, solitude and merriment conveyed by his instrument.

Much of the time Ashworth played as though part of the orchestra, his sounds nestling in the luxurious colours of the orchestra but then there would come passages of sheer exuberance and his playing would rise above the orchestra akin to the emotional outbursts of  Harlod himself in his reactions to scenes and events.

Ashworth himself was attentive to the conductor but also the orchestra and he followed their playing intensely, as though he were Harold witnessing a new spectacle.

There was a clever bit theatricality at the close of the work as Ashworth exited the stage to reappear a few minutes later up by the organ where he was joined by a string trio to play the final moments of the work.

To subscribe or follow New Zealand Arts Review site – www.nzartsreview.org.

The “Follow button” at the bottom right will appear and clicking on that button  will allow you to follow that blog and all future posts will arrive on your email.

Or go to https://nzartsreview.org/blog/, Scroll down and click “Subscribe”

Categories
Reviews, News and Commentary

On the cusp: a trio of masterworks

Review by Peter Simpson

Yeol Eum Son Photo: Marco Borggreve

Beethoven 7

Auckland Philharmonia

Auckland Town Hall

February 22

Reviewed by Peter Simpson

The three works in the second APO concert of the Premier Series for 2024: Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 24 in C Minor, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7, and the Overture to Rossini’s The Barber of Seville were all written within a thirty year period, 1786-1816: the Mozart in 1785-86, the Beethoven in 1812, and the Rossini in 1816. This period, on the cusp between the ‘classical’ and ‘Romantic’ periods, is one of the most consequential in the history of music. Each of these works is a masterwork in its own right; collectively they made for a supremely enjoyable and satisfying evening. The APO under Giordano Bellincampi, with South Korean soloist Yeol Eum Son in the Mozart, were in fine fettle.

Rossini just missed out on being a contemporary of  Mozart’s by being born in the year after Mozart’s death in 1791; Beethoven was twenty when Mozart died, just on the brink of his great career.

The Overture to The Barber of Seville scurries along entertainingly in Rossini’s instantly recognisable and ingratiating style. It is ‘feel good’ music, clearly enjoyed by the musicians, and bound to put listeners into a receptive frame of mind.

With her pale skin and flamboyant scarlet gown, Yeol Eum Son made a striking visual contrast to the pervasive black-and-white of the orchestra. She proved to be an elegant and forceful soloist plunging instantly and confidently into the minor-key depths and mysteries of one of Mozart’s greatest scores.

One of only two piano concertos in a minor key (the other is No. 20), this work has the most elaborate instrumentation of any of Mozart’s concertos, being scored for one flute, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, timpani and strings: it is especially rare in Mozart for oboes and clarinets to be used simultaneously. One of the great pleasures of seeing this work performed live is to be able to witness as well as hear the subtle and intricate interplay between the wind instruments and strings so important in the emotional ambience of the music. After the rapt complexities of the long opening movement, the limpid simplicity of the slow movement was ravishing; the deft variations of the finale, too, were finely executed.

Apparently the young Beethoven once witnessed a rehearsal of this concerto (presumably with Wolfgang Amadeus at the keyboard) and remarked to his companion: “We shall never be able to do anything like that’. His own break-through piano concerto No. 3 written in 1800, four years later, shares the same C-minor key. Twelve years later Beethoven’s grand Seventh Symphony was one of the triumphs of his career. It was performed with the composer conducting in Vienna in 2013 at a charity concert for soldiers wounded in a battle with the forces of Napoleon (Beethoven’s fallen hero). The first audience apparently demanded an immediate repeat of the second movement allegretto. While not going quite so far as that, the shouts of acclamation from Auckland’s Town Hall audience registered genuine excitement at the conclusion of this electrifying performance. From the solemn and sonorous opening bars to the disciplined frenzy of the finale this marvellous music engaged both musicians and audience alike.

To subscribe or follow New Zealand Arts Review site – www.nzartsreview.org.

The “Follow button” at the bottom right will appear and clicking on that button  will allow you to follow that blog and all future posts will arrive on your email.

Or go to https://nzartsreview.org/blog/, Scroll down and click “Subscribe”

Categories
Reviews, News and Commentary

IMPASSIONED MUSIC ACROSS THREE CENTURIES.

Reviewed by Peter Simpson

Julian Steckel

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.