Concerts

The sacred symbolism of light has inspired many composers over centuries and singers love to sing the Latin word ‘lux’, a word capable of much expressive beauty. 

The concert opened with one of four pieces called Lux Aeterna, the first a plainchant originating in the 12^th-century Catholic church. Sung by male voices only, it was a simple, peaceful, and thoughtful start to the concert. The other bookend of the concert was also a Lux Aeterna, an arrangement of Edward Elgar’s Nimrod from the Enigma Variations. Light years away from the plainchant, it had all the powerful sweetness associated with Elgar.

It was in the five movements of Lux Aeterna by Morten Lauridsen, an American contemporary of great stature in the choral world, that the choir performed best, creating a lovely tone – warm, clear, and well blended with a convincing range of dynamics, good energy, and excellent intonation.

Bob Chilcott’s Canticles of Light was another contemporary work. Its third movement, O Nata Lux de Lumine, was particularly well sung by the women choristers, their voices fading away beautifully into nothingness at the end.  

The capacity audience also heard a rich, solemnly prayerful Lux Aeterna by Brian Schmidt, and an elegant O Nata Lux by Guy Forbes, both contemporary American composers. Choir member Michael Winikoff’s Lux was a worthy addition to the programme.

The mostly a cappella programme was challenging. Despite being overall an entertaining concert, the choir was surprisingly tentative at times. Some entries were a bit untidy, some intonation momentarily unconfident, and the blending of soprano voices was occasionally wanting. Was it the unaccustomed acoustics of the venue? Or in the accompanied pieces, did the odd quality of the organ’s lower register have an impact?

Nevertheless, congratulations to music director Maaike Christie-Beekman and Nota Bene for the interesting, enjoyable, and seasonally appropriate concert.

In this production of The Creation, Orpheus Choir Wellington endeavoured to reimagine Haydn’s famous oratorio. As with a traditional staging of an oratorio, an orchestra, choir, and voice soloists performed the full score of The Creation, but these were supported by a 1.9 tonne LED screen and dancers from Footnote New Zealand Dance.

The Creation is arguably one of the most famous oratorios, and in German-speaking countries has much the same status as Handel’s Messiah does in the anglosphere. The text is drawn from Christian scripture and Milton’s Paradise Lost and relates the story of God’s creation of the world from “let there be light” down to the early days of Adam and Eve’s life in Eden.

The enormous screen was suspended above the choir and accompanied the story’s progression though the catalogue of creation with footage of galaxies, oceans, geological features, wildlife, and fruit. The visual effects walked a line between enhancing the production and distracting from the wonderful performances. There were a few times when the imagery was more abstract, and this was when it most effective because it felt far less dominant.

The three soloists, Anna Leese (soprano), Frederick Jones (tenor), and Joel Amosa (bass), were outstanding, especially when they sang as a trio. Jones’ recitative sections were particularly gorgeous thanks to his rich tone and expressive phrasing, and Leese and Amosa’s duets with the chorus in the third movement evoked all the delight and contentment of Eden.

The third movement featured dancers Airu Matsuda and Jemima Smith as representations of Adam and Eve. Despite having only a very narrow strip of floor space to work with in front of the orchestra, Matsuda and Smith managed to deliver a sensitive and affectionate performance to accompany one of the most beautiful passages in the oratorio.

Orchestra Wellington and Orpheus Choir Wellington provided the foundation of the production from the first disquieting bars of Representation of Chaos through to the triumphant finale Praise the Lord, Ye Voices All. It was wonderful to see so many local artistic elements come together in this innovative production.

Even if you didn’t know Helios is the god of the sun, Carl Nielsen’s wonderfully evocative Helios Overture had us listening to the sun rise, move across the sky, and set over the sea. This was clever programming to open the concert and was beautifully played.

Spontaneous applause from the audience marked the end of the first movement of Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto in D Major. The whole piece is regarded as one of the harder violin concerti, but soloist Augustin Hadelich made a lie of that and simply blew us away with his performance. The first movement has some very impressive scales, triads, runs, and moments when it seems the violinist is the only one on stage, as well as one of the most ambitious cadenzas in a violin concerto. Hadelich absorbed the challenge and almost became one with his violin. Under Dima Slobodeniouk’s very attentive direction, orchestra and soloist flew along, keeping up an enviable, but not overdone speed.

If the first was his tour de force, the third movement was Hadelich’s pièce de résistance. The final cadenza was sublime, virtuosic, and a spectacular end to a very happy piece of music. Hadelich’s encore showcased almost every sound, technique, and musical style you could think of and we enjoyed every note.

The Oceanides by Jean Sibelius is one of the best musical expressions of the sea in all its moods. Storm and wind were brought magically to life by surging and receding timpani and violins and the calm that followed by oboe and harp over strings. My companion heard the wave crashing on the shore and immediately recognised it as the rocks at Kaikōura.

Debussy’s La Mer is also a glorious musical description of the sun and the sea. Slobodeniouk and the orchestra interpreted Debussy’s intent and gave us a stunning representation of our natural environment.

It was an exceptional evening. Thanks, NZSO.

The three works on the programme had one thing in common. The composers, Stravinsky, Hindemith, and Korngold, all borrowed from earlier composers to create their works: Stravinsky from Tchaikovsky, Hindemith from von Weber (who in turn borrowed from Chinese musical traditions), and Korngold from his earlier self, greatly influenced by Mahler’s style. As conductor Marc Taddei said, the programme was a neoclassical ode to romanticism. I thought the orchestra was in top form throughout.

Stravinsky’s The Fairy’s Kiss, written for a ballet and so rife with storytelling, was a delight. It had endless charm and sweetness, interspersed with dark moments, mischief, ominous foreboding, and grief. Its soloistic opportunities for clarinet, flute, oboe, horn and cello were all beautifully played.

Hindemith’s Symphonic Metamorphosis on Themes by Carl Maria von Weber was more exotic and more dramatic with great passages for both brass and percussion. The quieter, more sombre moments and the eastern elements in the second movement did not last long before giving way to drama and energy. The work’s romantic origins shone through; it was lush, even sweet at times. The orchestra let its hair down for this one.

To illustrate the eastern influence in Hindemith’s work, Taddei brought to the stage Jia Ling, a musician highly skilled on the guzheng, an ancient Chinese zither which produces an elegant, sweet, and mellow sound like a bucolic waterfall. A beautiful interlude.

Korngold was a famous composer for Hollywood films who later returned to concert music. He used his own earlier movie themes to create his Violin Concerto. Not surprisingly, this work too was lush and full of wide-open American spaces. Amalia Hall was the soloist. Her outstanding virtuosic technique was absolutely on top of the work’s huge challenges. The audience summoned her back for an encore, also stunningly performed.

This was another night of pleasure and education from Taddei and Orchestra Wellington.

Robert Schumann’s Symphony No. 4 in D Minor is actually the second symphony he wrote but, 10 years after its disappointing premiere, he revised it. This is what we know as Symphony No. 4. A sombre start gave way to lyrical passages and big brass chords. This characterises the whole symphony – a combination of classical and romantic styles, and themes repeated throughout. Conductor André de Ridder skilfully managed the handoffs and interplay between moods and the changes in orchestration. The dignified restraint of brass and timpani in the fourth movement tipped joyously into the whole orchestra, ending in a playful mood.

Jean Sibelius never fulfilled his dream of being a virtuoso violinist, but he wrote his Violin Concerto in D Minor for those who are. It is famously difficult to play and when a virtuoso takes on the challenge, you know they will give you everything they’ve got. Because it is incredibly tough and demanding, we hear it relatively often. Maxim Vengerov’s performance was so exceptional, it was almost like hearing it for the first time.

He opened with breathtaking bravura, an intense, rich tone, and passion we could hear, see, and feel, all of which were sustained the whole way through. De Ridder brought a similar depth and richness of tone from the orchestra that complemented the solo passages. Both orchestra and soloist make the whole work, but it is really all about the solo violin, and Vengerov made at least as much impact alone, if not more, than the orchestra did as a whole. A standing ovation from a full house confirmed Vengerov, de Ridder, and the NZSO had surely fulfilled Sibelius’ dreams for his concerto.

Guest soloists are generous with their talent and we heard the second movement of Henryk Wieniawski’s Violin Concerto No. 2 as an encore. Vengerov added something special to the evening when he turned to the orchestra’s violinists and played for them.

György Ligeti’s early life was chaotic and traumatic and his legacy reflects this. His first work was based on Hungarian and Romany folk songs, and he became one of the most important avant-garde composers of the 20^th century. He wrote Concert Românesc five years before fleeing Hungary after the 1956 uprising. Some of the harmonies hint at Ligeti’s later interests in atonal music but also reflect the melody and tonality of the folk songs. In four short movements, there is a lot to listen to. During Mozart: The Great, we could see conductor André de Ridder’s close engagement with the orchestra and his light and nimble style.

Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21 in C Major was the absolute highlight of the evening. Andrea Lam played brilliantly. Her interpretation and sensitivity to Mozart’s work was impeccable. The concerto is so well known, most of us probably don’t listen closely very often. Part of the pleasure of a live performance is being part of something where everyone shares the same focus. Lam’s command of the music, coupled with de Ridder’s direction, added the special X factor. All the details you might miss listening casually were prominent and dominant when they should be. The magical combinations on the stage brought all the small details perfectly to the fore as well. It made for almost effortless listening. Lam treated us to a beautiful Chopin encore, which proved her talent beyond doubt.

I have history with Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 in G Minor. It was a set piece for my music O-level years ago. We could see how much de Ridder enjoys Mozart and his vocation as a conductor. Once I’d pushed aside the remnants of what I once learned (classical symphonic form, one of only two symphonies Mozart wrote in a minor key), it was a really lovely performance by conductor and orchestra to close an excellent evening of music.

Lili Boulanger’s D’un matin de printemps (Of a Spring Morning) was a lovely opening to the evening’s programme. Filled with the usual images of spring, the piece begins with birds singing and new growth bursting forth on trees and flowers. Then, as if the sun rose over the hill and the air warmed rapidly, the mood becomes joyful and lively, signalling the day ahead.

We were pointed east. Just a couple of bars into Maurice Ravel’s song cycle Shéhérazade, Virginie Verrez’s voluptuous mezzo-soprano voice flowed towards us, rich and full and seemingly effortless. The acoustics in the Michael Fowler Centre are excellent but surely, they cannot balance one voice against 60 instrumentalists unless the voice is something special. Verrez used physical and facial expressions to strengthen her illustration of the scenes and atmosphere Ravel described. She was very slightly overwhelmed by the orchestra once or twice, but only for a moment. Guest conductor Stéphane Denève, a storyteller par excellence, guided us through Ravel’s scenes and drew the best from Verrez in a magnificent, high crescendo followed by rich, sumptuous waves of sound from the orchestra.

The storytelling continued with Richard Strauss’ Ein Heldenleben (A Hero’s Life). Six ‘chapters’ tell us about the hero’s life and Strauss uses the power and parts of a large orchestra to great effect. The stage was packed, including a full complement of brass. Nine French horns gave a clue to some of the heroism we would hear. And, as they always do, the NZSO rose to the challenge set before them by Denève. The music told the story but the performance filled out the picture. I could sense euphoria from the musicians on stage at being part of the immense sound they were making, and we could see the satisfaction in Maestro Denève’s stature as we listened to the tale he and his orchestra told.

This year’s impressive performance from the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra National Youth Orchestra, Te Tira Pūoro Rangatahi, marked the NYO’s 65^th anniversary and was attended by a packed house.

The musicians of the NYO are selected annually from auditionees and meet in Wellington for one week of intensive rehearsals ahead of concerts in Wellington and Palmerston North. The musicians are all under the age of 25, and the scheme provides an invaluable opportunity to play in a full orchestra with professional conductors and soloists. They also receive mentoring from the musicians of the NZSO, many of whom were seen in attendance on Friday night. Conductor Tianyi Lu took time to acknowledge the hard work of the 85 young musicians, and the support of their families and music teachers.

The short rehearsal period and the fact that these musicians are not accustomed to playing together made the ambitious scale of the repertoire all the more impressive. The evening opened with the world premiere of Jessie Leov’s Speculations on a Rainbow. Leov is the 2024 National Youth Orchestra Composer-in-Residence and will soon be travelling to Princeton University to workshop with the Edward T. Cone Composition Institute. Speculations on a Rainbow is a response to the work of Aotearoa New Zealand visual artist Judy Millar, and shifts deftly between radiant and reflective moods.

Aram Khachaturian’s piano concerto featured acclaimed 14-year-old Aotearoa New Zealand pianist Shan Liu as the soloist. Liu gave a characteristically virtuosic performance, followed by a generous encore. The final work of the evening, Sergei Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 5, provided opportunities for each section to shine, and the orchestra achieved a remarkably unified sound. I would like to echo Liu in congratulating everyone involved with the NYO, especially the young musicians. It’s wonderful to see that the future of Aotearoa’s classical music is in such capable hands.

There is possibly no work from the classical period of music more generally known and loved by audiences than Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 in D minor. But in the early 19^th century, it broke some conventions of the symphonic form, particularly in that the fourth movement is a choral movement. Taddei noted in his spoken introduction that the work was consequential, influencing the development of music significantly.

The opera composer, Verdi, considered that Beethoven did not write well for voices. And truly, I have heard performances where both soloists and choir strain to meet the demands of the work. But on this occasion, my greatest pleasure was the work of the Orpheus Choir; they were terrific. So were the soloists, Emma Pearson (soprano), Margaret Medlyn (alto), Emmanuel Fonoti-Fuimaono (tenor), and Robert Tucker (bass). If I had a quibble about this performance, it would be that Taddei perhaps drove it a bit too fast, at the cost of some beauty of expression. The audience gave it rapturous applause.

The other two items in the concert were 20^th-century works that are neoclassical in style. Prokofiev set out to write his Classical Symphony as he thought Haydn might have written a symphony if living in the 20^th century. Tuneful, playful, bright, cheerful, elegant: it was a delight to hear. Full marks especially to the pairs of flutes and oboes that featured in the fourth movement. What a gift for those players.

The third work of the concert was a piano concerto composed by Germaine Tailleferre, the only female composer in Les Six, an early 20^th-century grouping of French composers. I particularly enjoyed the cross rhythms between the piano and the orchestra in this work, across a variety of moods – jaunty, spiky, stately, and gentle. Pianist Somi Kim was very assured, delivering both delicacy and power.

Jubilation presented an eclectic smorgasbord of orchestral music. NZSO music director Emeritus James Judd returned to the conductor’s podium as the evening’s featured artist, and provided friendly and accessible commentary. The concert included two short pieces from young New Zealand composers alongside works by Richard Strauss and Dmitri Shostakovich. As a group these pieces felt incongruous, and I don’t think the programming opened up fruitful conversations between them. That said, the variety and virtuosity on display still made for an enjoyable evening.

The performance opened with Henry Meng’s fleeting Fanfare, which was bitingly concentrated and exuberant. The two-minute work contains plenty of complexity, transitioning rapidly from its domineering brass opening to an expressive oboe melody and back to straining violins. Meng shuns resolution or breathing space in Fanfare to an extreme but exhilarating degree.

This was followed by Strauss’ Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, an orchestral suite adapted from the musical accompaniment to a comedy of the same name, which details the disastrous exploits of a middle-class man who longs to be accepted into the aristocracy. The many soloists couldn’t be faulted, and the light, comedic tone of the work shone through.

After interval we were treated to Sai Natarajan’s We Long for an Adventure. Featuring a playfully jazzy theme interspersed with forceful strings, Natarajan’s composition is a delicious snack that felt more substantial than its four-minute runtime would suggest.

However, the night belonged to Shostakovich’s ninth. Symphony No. 9 in E-flat Major, Op. 70 premiered in 1945 and was received with hostility both in the Soviet Union and by American critics. The work is irreverent to the point of hostility, but still deeply felt. As in the NZSO’s past performances of Shostakovich, the orchestra demonstrated mastery of the heady combination of humour and anguish that drives his compositions. The woodwind section deserves particular praise, with the flutes’ gorgeous molten phrases echoed heartbreakingly by the oboe in the fourth movement.

Han-Na Chang showed herself to be a passionate, expressive, and energetic conductor. Born in Korea, Chang was an acclaimed cellist at the age of 11, winning a major international competition before later turning to conducting.

Opening the concert was a new work by New Zealander Leonie Holmes, I watched a shadow. Holmes created a dense, multi-layered soundscape, the swirling texture frequently pierced by higher, sharper, or louder interjections. Inspired by a poem that depicts a shadow climbing and gradually extinguishing the light on a hill, the work ends with a fortissimo climax which Chang exploited to the full.

The second work in the concert was Richard Strauss’ Don Quixote, depicting episodes from the 17^th-century novel about the hapless, would-be knight adventurer, and his off-sider Sancho Panza. The solo cello part, played by Andrew Joyce, represented the Don, while Sancho Panza is represented principally by a viola played by Julia Joyce. The work is inventive, energetic, and varied in texture and mood, sometimes dramatic and heroic, sometimes lyrical, and often straight-up hilarious, as when the orchestra becomes a flock of sheep which the deluded hero imagines is an enemy to be attacked. It felt to me that the Don’s musical character got a bit submerged in the riotousness of the orchestral parts. On the other hand, it was great for once to hear a viola in an extended solo part.

Tchaikovsky’s well-loved Symphony No. 5 concluded the performance. A theme, known as the Fate theme, runs through the four movements, with mournful foreboding about fate gradually giving way to a heroic and optimistic acceptance of it. Beautiful melodies abound and there are wonderful opportunities for flute, oboe, bassoon, and horn to shine. Chang’s robust and dramatic interpretation drew the best from the orchestra and engendered wild applause from an appreciative audience.

This was a brilliantly designed and executed concert. The theme for The Grand Gesture was to illustrate how composers often go to the music of fellow composers, past and present, for inspiration. In this concert, Stravinsky’s Suite from Pulcinella borrowed from works composed by 18^th century Pergolesi, Handel modelled his Concerti Grossi on forms used by his contemporary Corelli, while 20^th century Lukas Foss’ Baroque Variations transformed baroque works by Handel, Scarlatti, and Bach.

This borrowing was illustrated by unexpected solo performances of source works at the start of each half of the programme. The soloists, violinist Amalia Hall and harpsichord player Jonathan Berkahn, were spotlit in the darkened hall as they played. Magic!

Pulcinella is an appealing work, full of good rhythms, good tunes, and good humour. Maybe the orchestra was a bit tentative at the start but it was a spirited performance on the whole. There were lots of opportunities for individual instruments to shine, especially in the wind and brass sections.

The soloists for Bach’s Concerto for Two Violins were Amalia Hall and Monique Lapins. It’s an immensely lovely work with the two violins echoing and chasing each other. I also enjoyed the fine basso continuo work of the cellos and double basses. Handel’s grand gesture, Concerto Grosso Op. 6 No. 12, also featured Hall and Lapins with principal cellist Inbal Megiddo. Again, this was elegantly played with clarity and balance by soloists and orchestra.

Then came Foss’ work! His sources were transformed, so that one heard sometimes just a ghost of the original, with strings bowing some notes silently or playing half phrases completed by other instruments. The effect was like splintered sound in an echo chamber. Foss also marshalled an array of unusual percussion in the last movement. It was wild. Taddei compared it to an old-fashioned acid trip!