Month: December 2025

WORLDS WITHIN WORLDS – Wellington City Orchestra’s congress of assorted realities

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Wellington City Orchestra at St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace, with Diedre Irons (piano), Brendan Agnew (conductor), and Virginie Pacheco (Assistant Conductor)

SAI NATARAJAN – In This Corner Of The World
LUDWIG van BEETHOVEN – Piano Concerto No. 3 in C Minor
DOUGLAS LILBURN – Symphony No. 2

Diedre Irons (piano)
Virginie Pacheco (Assistant Conductor – Natarajan)
Brendan Agnew  (Conductor)
Wellington City Orchestra

St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace, Wellington
Sunday, 7th December, 2025

Now this was a treat for any concertgoer relishing the thought of something old and something new, combining an easeful kind of familiarity with more challenging musical terrain, as well as setting home-grown worlds in a wider context. Wellington City Orchestra’s programme enterprisingly opened up for us here-and-now impressions of creative forces at work in Aotearoa, before time-travelling us to Beethoven’s world and back again, and finally giving us a time-in-motion slice of “being” at a significant emerging point in our own colourful history. The sounds we heard spoke volumes for each of these times and places – it was something of a proverbial journey!

Different people participated in this process, and in different ways – we were welcomed to the concert at its beginning by Rowena Cullen, the orchestra’s President who’s also a member of the violin section, after which today’s conductor Brendan Agnew firstly paid tribute to a recently deceased orchestra member, Mark Hill, and then introduced today’s concert’s assistant conductor, Virginie Pacheco, who directed the concert’s opening performance, a heartwarming piece by youthful composer Sai Natarajan. At its conclusion Brendan Agnew then  bade us welcome pianist Diedre Irons to the stage to deliver her Beethoven concerto performance. Like the “players” in Shakespeare’s “Ages of Man” all of these individuals had, by their own lights, a special part to play in the panoply.

Beginning the concert charmingly  and sonorously was a work written by emerging freelance composer Sai Natarajan, from Palmerston North, one called “In This Corner of the World”. With Assistant Conductor Virginie Pacheco (the first to actually hold this title with the WCO) at the helm, we were transported at the beginning to the Manawatu plains, with Sibelius-like wind impulses sounding across the deeper murmurings of those open spaces, all the while engendering awakenings of activity, the thrustings and resoundings suggesting  iceberg-tips of the “absolute powerhouse of artistic and musical talent” that abides in the region.

The music gathers itself and epically “pushes out” this landscape, contrasting numerous “forest murmurings’ with attention-grabbing percussive scintillations, a recurring motif resounding in one’s attention as the brass give us some Lilburn-like reminiscences suggesting the inherent “musicality” of natural rhythms. My own experiences as a born-and-bred Palmerstonian responded to the composer’s recognition of “artistic toiling” in modestly-appointed, yet still-resonating hatcheries of human productivity in all fields of expression. I remember watching as my parents and their contemporaries set examples for us of partaking of things resulting for some of us in what Sai Natarajan calls  an artist’s “joys, struggles, disappointments and triumphs”, and from which modest origins still brought forth “beauty and joy”  in the doing, and occasionally even something enduring and worth celebrating – as this this great-hearted piece certainly was!

Happily, “In This Corner of the World”, after being premiered by the Manawatu Sinfonia in 2024, was recorded earlier this year by the NZSO as part of their annual NZ Composer Sessions initiative. I would imagine we haven’t heard the last of this intuitive, versatile, and delightfully communicative composer.

The programme’s suggestion of a wider context of human creativity was hinted at by the music of a composer whose output for many people epitomised a kind of universality  of utterance, Ludwig van Beethoven. His Third Piano Concerto is a kind of bridge-work between the classical and romantic eras, a realm which Mozart had also occasionally explored in music written in a similar key, but one more fully and dramatically furthered by this and other works by Beethoven.

Having splendidly recorded all of the composer’s piano concertos, and frequently played them in concert Diedre Irons was the ideal soloist to realise the “sturm und drang” of this work, aided by a suitably dark-browed accompaniment from the orchestra, with conductor Brendan Agnew on the podium. The opening was the orchestra’s alone, strongly-focused and well-detailed, to which the soloist responded with suitably dramatic contrasting gestures – it wasn’t all high drama and theatricality, with the second subject group almost playful in intent in places under Irons’ fingers, but leading back to a stern recapitulation by the players under Agnew’s direction and a properly virtuoso performance of the solo cadenza. Here, Irons was in complete command of the drama and volatility of the writing, bringing out the almost ghostly ambiences of the instrument’s return to the world of interaction in the movement’s darkly-enigmatic coda.

One of the most beautiful of Beethoven’s slow movements followed, with piano and orchestral passages delighting the ear, and the interchanges expressing a heartfelt “communal” sense of expression. Irons’ voicing of the decorative poetic utterances made every impulse a joy, and the winds and strings in particular matched her ardour – though the strings’ pizzicati could have been a tad firmer in places as they were near to inaudibility, so sensitive was their response! Particularly lovely were the last few interactions, the strings tender phrasings and the piano’s “haunted” chordings all underpinned by dark wind-and-brass murmurings before the latter echoed the piano’s final descending notes and brought in a final single chord – magical!

I loved the insouciance with which Irons then started the finale’s ball rolling – but the orchestra was ready for her, picking up the traces of the trajectories and ready to do its bit with the first big tutti – what great exchanges between orchestra and piano with those mighty chords and flourishes! A lovely clarinet solo introduced and elaborated on a new episode, and a string fugato followed, after a while beginning to loosen at the seams, but managing to complete the task as the pianist jumped in and steadied the rhythms! The recapitulation was strong and purposeful, as was Irons’ final grandstand solo flourish before the coda’s cheeky beginning, with truly spectacular piano-playing and a suitably vigorous audience response.

She was accorded a richly deserved tribute from all, but had not done with us yet! To our delight she sat back down at the piano and began the deliciously droll F Minor Allegro moderato dance from Schubert’s adorable Moments Musicaux. It was playing in which every note resonated and every impulse “choreographed” its own sound, inviting parts of us by turns to listen and sing and dance in our minds – and the moment towards the end when the final line impishly turned to F Major seemed as if the music was suddenly smiling at us and telling us to forget our troubles – magical piano playing!

An interval saw the piano further “magicked” to one side, leaving more space for the players to resound the strains of one of Aotearoa New Zealand’s most significant musical compositions, Douglas Lilburn’s Second Symphony. Completed in 1951, this iconic work had to wait until 1959 for its first public performance. Part of the problem was the country’s National Orchestra still being in its relative infancy (it gave its first concert in 1947) and its early conductors were certainly reluctant at that time to “take the plunge” with anything as off the beaten track as a locally-produced symphony – rather, they were set upon establishing the standard repertoire. The composer’s First Symphony had been an earlier casualty, completed in 1949, and premiered in 1951, to be then ignored for a further ten years. It wasn’t until the advent of John Hopkins as the National Orchestra’s Principal Conductor in the late 1950s that Lilburn’s music began to be performed more regularly – the composer’s gratitude was such that he went on to write a Third Symphony in 1961 and dedicate it to Hopkins!

The Second Symphony has always been associated with quintessential aspects of New Zealand life and landscape. What the composer referred to as “the imponderables” of the natural world feature strongly in the work – contrasts of light and shade and the vagaries of weather are prominent characteristics of the music’s different ambiences. Human influences are also a factor – in the second movement Lilburn immortalised what he described as the ”nasal and tangy” cry of Wellington’s Evening Post Paper-boy’s call, heard as he passed through the capital en route to or from the South Island. Others have commented upon the “search for identity” aspect of the music in the other movements, particularly in the third “Introduction”, where the “frontier” aspect of the environment seems somewhat remote and forbidding and essentially solitary. The music’s angst-like textures and ambiences seem to reflect struggles associated with a 1950s “coming of age” in artistic and other matters, one which the final movement translates into more positive and robust gesturings. I must here admit to a degree of dissatisfaction with the “Introduction” movement regarding its brevity – though expertly crafted, it doesn’t for me go far enough or even resound sufficiently within its existing parameters, eluding the feeling of a truly epic statement of being (it’s significantly shorter in scale than both the first or last movements!) – or have I been listening to too much Mahler or Bruckner or Shostakovich of late?

But to the beginning – beautifully and wistfully opened by the strings the first movement also featured buoyant solos from oboe, clarinet and flute, with the horns in atmospheric alignment. The strings, winds and brass raised us to the heights mid-movement with the horns having a wonderful “Carl Nielsen” moment (I once got taken to task by Lilburn himself for suggesting  the merest connection of him with that composer!), and the timpani adding to the music’s “epic” quality before the strings, with the oboe supported by the horns, bring the movement to a relatively placid close. A pity the St.Andrew’s acoustic had difficulty sorting  the dynamics, with the brass, to my ears sounding a bit lost in the mid-movement tuttis’ welter of sound!

Better-realised was the Scherzo, a more nimble, less weighty sound, the oboe doing a great job with the perky theme, and the brass and timpani lively at the climaxes. The other winds did splendid things with their variants of the theme, but the most nostalgic moments were the cellos’ introduction of the “paperboy” theme, and the strings in general joining in with its more extended moments. Elsewhere, the “snap” and “bite” of the rhythms was a joy.

The opening of the third movement  “Introduction” with its bleak and unremitting atmosphere was promising – strings and winds in tandem advanced the sobriety of it all, bringing out an almost Sibelius-like feeling of isolation to the textures. The strings pursued a “wandering” course underscored by the brass and counterpointed by the horns, and with the oboe and flute doggedly “lifting” the mood in places. The brass seemed warmer and more heroic when first entering, but their aspect quickly darkened in accord with the strings, the anguished chordings from both heightening the unease which the flute sought to console. At this point I wanted more, but for whatever reason the composer had decreed “enough”, and before we knew where we were, the finale was upon us and the clouds had dispersed …..

Though the composer might have given this marvellous finale more to react to in situ,  the energising warmth and freshness of the movement’s opening textures set the tone for what followed, impulses which seemed like a symbolic renewal of confidence following a dark night of the soul. Lilburn had already in words enjoined his fellow-composers to engage in what he called “a search for tradition” relating to the necessity of “writing our own music”, in his now-historic 1946 Cambridge Music School lecture written under the same title. Here, now, he practised his own dictum in the composition of this symphony, and to the extent he felt it necessary, whatever critics might say about the result! The work emphasised both challenge and possibility, and the results today spoke for themselves.

The coming-together of these things in this finale was a heady experience – moments in which the big ringing brass theme soared out gloriously, and the orchestra in other places seemed to pick up its skirts and dance were made the more memorable by a final peroration begun by stratospheric strings, and chiselled out of the texture by resounding brass and rolling timpani in glorious C Major! It had the effect of consuming everything at the concert’s conclusion in swathes of splendour and happiness!

 

 

 

BACK TO BACH from Baroque Voices takes the listener on a journey

Posted on by Peter Mechen
Baroque Voices at St.Mary of the Angels – from left: Pepe Becker, Andrea Cochrane, Samuel Berkahn, David Morriss, Imogen Granwal (‘cello), Simon Christie. Jamie Young, Toby Gee, Rowena Simpson

 

JS BACH – The Six Motets (BWV 225-230)
Baroque Voices (directed by Pepe Becker)

Pepe Becker, Rowena Simpson (sopranos)
Andrea Cochrane, Toby Gee (altos)
Samuel Berkahn, Jamie Young (tenors)
David Morriss, Simon Christie (basses)
Imogen Granwal (baroque ‘cello)

St.Mary of the Angels Church, Boulcott St., Wellington
Sunday 30th November, 2025

To my shame, I had never before heard a single one of JS Bach’s Motets before finding out about this concert – I’d “heard of” a couple of the titles of famous ones, such as “Komm, Jesu, komm” and “Jesu, mein Freude”, but had never taken the step of getting to know them, thinking that the “Passions” and the “B Minor Mass” and the “Christmas Oratorio” and the “Magnificat”, plus a clutch of Cantatas sufficiently qualified me as an accredited “Choral Bach listener”. So I was both delighted and intrigued upon being told by Baroque Voices’ director Pepe Becker some time ago that this concert was coming up, and DID managed to track down a couple of recordings and fit in some “listening” beforehand so as to get something of an idea of what I was in for…..

The concert date duly arrived and the presentation took place with the succinct title “Back to Bach” for  the Voices’ heady “whirlwind tour” through all six of the composer’s sacred motets, performed by the Wellington ensemble in the sumptuous (perhaps a tad too much so acoustically!) setting of St.Mary of the Angels church in the heart of the city. The director, Pepe Becker, described these works in her programme notes for the concert as “sublime, complex and deeply moving”, though one could add plenty of further epithets to the description of the afternoon’s performance by the ensemble. We warmed as readily to the exuberance of the writing, its enjoyment generated as much by the music’s own urgencies of feeling as by the voices’ different physicalities, all with their own channelled energies. These things all came together, the pieces amply reflecting their creator’s unquenchable human spirit and belief in a higher divine authority.

Unlike the cantatas, which Bach wrote regularly for every Sunday of the church year, the motets were infrequently produced for special occasions in Leipzig, and some may have even been lost. The six surviving ones were in fact the only choral works of Bach which didn’t disappear entirely from view until the renowned “Bach revival” of the 19th Century. The famous story of Mozart’s joyful response, upon hearing in Leipzig in 1789 a performance of Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied (Sing to the Lord a new song) bears witness to these works carrying a torch for future generations.

It’s unclear what Bach’s intentions were regarding the instrumental accompaniment of these works – only one of the motets, Der Geist hilft unser Schwachheit auf (BWV 226) has extant orchestra parts, and two other Motets have separate continuo basslines written, Furchte dich (BWV 228), and Lobet den Herrn (BWV 230). So there is no “final word” regarding instrumental accompaniment, according to the composer. The works would probably have been accompanied at least by basso continuo (an organ or a melodic bass instrument) – Baroque Voices use a bass stringed instrument in all but two of the Motets – Komm, Jesu, komm (BWV 229), and Jesu, meine Freude (BWV 227), here a baroque cello, played by Imogen Granwal.

Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied got the concert away to a stirringly festive beginning, with the wonderful “pinging” calls of the opening Singet, the tones brightly shining, and the lines mellifluously blending, swirling nicely together at Die Gemeine der Heiligen sollen in loben, (Sing His praise in the congregation of saints). As well, the infectious “dancing” tones of Die Kinder Zion sei’n frölich über ihren Könige  (Let the children of Zion be joyful in their King) were delightful, leading to the  splendid all-in tones of the climactic Mit Pauken und Harfen sollen sie im spielen! (Let them sing praises unto Him with the timbrel and harp)! The second-movement Chorale Wie sich ein Vat’r erbarmet (As a father is merciful) had one group singing the chorale, and the other interspersing lines from the aria Gott, nimm dich ferner unser an (O, Lord, continue to care for us) – beautiful, heartfelt exchanges! A suitably zestful Lobet den Herrn in seinen Taten (Praise the Lord for His mighty acts), then moved without a break in momentum to a triple-time Alleluia for a satisfying finish.

Next was the tremulously-expressed Komm Jesu, Komm (Come, Jesu, Come), so very theatrical at the outset, and with the individual voices then conveying the hardship of life’s vicissitudes with Die Kraft verschwindt je mehr und mehr (My strength is fading more and more), and the solace of expectation, freed from “Der saure Weg” (the stony path). The voices put an infectious eagerness into the renewed cries of “Komm, komm”, and a renewed strength of certainty  (with touches of elation!) into the trajectories of Du bist der rechte Weg, die Wahrheit, und das Leben (The Way, the Truth and the Light). The concluding Chorale, Drum schliess ich mich in deine Hande (So I entrust myself into Thy hands) quietly exalted in its certainty here, right to the final long-breathed notes.

Though written for the funeral service in October 1729 of Johann Heinrich Ernesti, longtime rector of the St. Thomas School  in Leipzig, Bach was perhaps inspired by the great man’s positive qualities by writing some attractive and inspirational music for this motet, Der Geist hilft unser Schwachheit auf (The Spirit also helpeth our infirmities). Its cheerful, forward-pressing gait and general overall tone includes some droll references to the “Spirit’s” intercession for our prayers “mit unaussprechlichem Seufzen” (with unutterable groanings)! The music’s lovely 3/8 trajectory at the beginning changes to common-time for both the “groanings” and the references to “Der aber die Herzen forschet” (He that searcheth the Heart). My only other thought was that the Chorale could perhaps have been a little more hushed, and varied in delivery at the outset, as befitted the words “Du Heilige Brunst, süsser Trost” (Heavenly Fire, sweet consolation) – which sounded as if they might have come from Schiller, for goodness sakes!

The interval gave us time to reflect on the magnificence of the music and the manifest qualities of the performances, which were considerable – brightly-shining tones, nimble trajectories, neither rushed nor dragging, distinctive individual voices, and, despite some idiosyncratic vocal “blends” in certain places, still successfully ensuring the voices’ clarity and the words’ flavourings and colourings were imparted. I wondered in places whether the acoustic was actually a bit “too much”, resulting in some of the singers’ tones being amplified more than others, and wondered whether a smaller, sparser acoustic might have integrated the sounds better. However, it was a “sometimes” effect, as more often the ensembled sounds came together most mellifluously.

The lovely opening of Fürchte dich nicht (Fear not) with its euphonious exchanges continued our pleasure, as did, in an entirely different way, the dramatic interpolations of recitative-like utterances of “Ich stärke dich!” from individual singers, and the contrast between the austere chromatic fugal passages and the radiant chorale excepts from the sopranos in the ensuing fugue, a vocal contrast that continued to delight us until the final concerted statement “Furche dich nicht – Du bist mein!” Heartwarming!

The longest and most complex of the motets is Jesu, meine Freude  (“Jesus, my Joy”). Essentially scored for five voices, including a second soprano line (as with Bach’s Magnificat) it alternates a chorale tune by Johann Crüger with settings of texts by Johann Franck and from Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. It’s uncertain just when this motet was composed, or for what particular purpose, with one scholar even advocating the idea of Bach using the work just for educational purposes with his St.Thomas’s Leipzig  choir.

The beautiful opening sang out gloriously, the singers relishing the third of each group of lines of text, arching each towards a moment of intense feeling – a marked contrast with the beginning of the next movement’s Es ist nun nichts Verdamliches (There is therefore now no condemnation) with the word “nichts” separately and pointedly repeated, and the following line “Die nicht nach dem Fleische wandein” (Who walk not after the flesh) which wanders graphically in a kind of wilderness! The wonderful third movement Unter Deinem Schirmen (Protected by Thee) returned to the chorale tune, whose serenity was “roughed up” with references to Kracht und Blitz (“Thunder and Lightning”) and then Sünd und Hölle (“Sin and Hell”) adding to the dramatic effect. The three women’s voices then consoled our fears with the fourth movement’s Denn das Gesetz des Geistes (“For the Law of the Spirit”).

More drama and contrast was depicted by the fifth movement’s  Trotz dem alten Drachen (“Defy the Old Dragon”), the singers hurling the word “Trotz” (Defy!) upwards and outwards, and agitatedly word-crafting a world raging and quaking (Tobe, Welt und Springe – ”Rage, world, and quake!”), before painting a picture of the soul standing and singing  in perfect peace with God (Ich steh’ hier und singe in gar Sicher Ruh). The following movement Ihr aber seid nich Fleischlich (“For ye are not of the flesh”) most winningly here contrasted a quick-moving fugal opening with a sonorous chorale-like conclusion Wer aber Christi Geist nicht hat, der ist nicht sein! – (“Yet one who has not the Spirit of Christ is not His!”).

The vigorous and wonderful Weg mit allen Schätzen(“Away with all earthly treasures!)  that followed featured the soprano with the chorale line set against such deliciously contrasting and detailed figurations from the others – the urgently-delivered opening from the lower voices and with its first word Weg! repeated, was such a delight! And the singers conveyed the “strongly-felt essence” of other utterances such as Elend, Not, Kreuz, Schmach und Tod (“Poverty, distress, Cross, disgrace and death”) so very vividly at the conclusion.

The winsome So aber Christus in euch ist (“And if Christ be in you”) was gentle and dance-like, here, until the words Der Geist aber ist das Leben “But the Spirit is life”, when the figurations quickened, though leaving us with a somewhat unresolved conclusion – this was supplied by the following Gute Nacht, O Wesen (“Goodnight, O earthly Life”) – here, a stunningly beautiful piece whose lines I thought the sopranos  took a little time to settle into at the beginning, but which achieved a magic by the end.

After these heartfelt articulations, So nun der Geist des (“Now that the Spirit of him”) seemed businesslike and anecdotal by comparison, almost a case of the narrator moving the story on to its inevitable conclusion! Bach replicates the manner of the work’s second movement in the use of a repeated word (here, “Geist” is repeated, as was the word “Nichts” in the second movement) and the text has the same instruction-like tone as Es ist nun nichts Verdamliches. The true frisson of feeling came with the final Weicht, ihr Trauergeister (“Disperse, sombre spirits”), with the original opening Chorale melody taking us back to the work’s beginning in the most disarming and direct way – all truly wonderful!

There remained the “orphan” of the bunch to give some attention to – the motet Lobet den Herrn, alle Heiden (“Praise the Lord all ye nations”), the one that there’s “doubt” as to whether or not it’s by Bach at all.  Pepe Becker put it succinctly in her programme note about the piece, saying that “it’s hard to imagine who else could have written such a vital, well-crafted piece”. And who could blame her, with such material to perform? At the beginning a sprightly combination of lines led to a splendidly-voiced fugue at “Und preiset ihn, aller Völker”, after which an appropriately slower section made reference to Seine Gnade und Wahrheit (which will) waltet uber uns in Ewigkeit “His mercy and truth (which will) reign over us for all eternity” – and with everything then enlivened by a sequence of triple-time Alleluias – an appropriately joyful way to end such a concert!

What to say? – except that the experience for me of hearing these works in concert for the first time was life-changing. To Pepe Becker and her Baroque Voices grateful thanks for a truly resounding experience!

 

NZSO’s night of beauty and splendour with Berlioz and Bruckner

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Joyce diDonato sings Berlioz with the NZSO and Gemma New – photo credit Phoebe Tuxford

HECTOR BERLIOZ – Les Nuits d’ete
ANTON BRUCKNER – Symphony No. 7 in E Major

Joyce diDonato (mezzo-soprano)
Gemma New (conductor)
New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington
Friday, November 28th. 2025

We would have been forgiven, at the conclusion of this Wellington concert’s first-half-outpouring of glorious vocalism from American mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato, for imagining that the rest of the evening’s music-making would prove at best worthy, but hardly scaling the heights to which we’d been taken. And with good reason, as we had just heard one of the most beautiful of all orchestral song-cycles, Hector Berlioz’s “Les Nuits d’ete”, here performed in a way that simply embodied the idea of a singer “inhabiting” a piece of music, with every note, phrase, expression and gesture savoured as if parts of a living entity. For Joyce DiDonato, it’s music that, in her own words, is “emotional, beautiful and identifiable – it has both the light and the dark, a little bit of humour, and then the pathos.”

From the moment she stepped onto the Michael Fowler Centre stage DiDonato had her audience’s attention (as befitted a renowned international singer making her New Zealand debut) and, on this occasion transfixed her listeners with the first few notes of “Villanelle”, the cycle’s opening song, a charming “pastorelle” describing the onset of the spring, and the simple peregrinations of lovers, and with the singer’s voice by turns eager, wry, teasing and tender. As with the other songs, not a phrase or gesture went for nothing – we saw the “pearled dewdrops” and heard the “blackbirds call”, in “the month that lovers bless”, all delivered with a natural-sounding fluency, an artistry concealing art and revealing living feeling.

So it was with the different world of “Le Spectre de la Rose”, the renowned song which depicts a dream-like sequence of a rose plucked and worn at a ball, and promising to return every night to haunt its wearer’s dreams – the singer firstly galvanised us with the splendour of words such as “..j’arrive du Paradis” (I come from Paradise) – but then, how different a world the same voice plunged us into with the following “Sur les lagunes” (On the Lagoons), with the opening words “Ma belle amie est morte” (My beautiful love is dead), with each of the verses’ chilling and prescient Mahlerian final line “Ah!  Sans amour s’en aller sur la mer!” (Alas! – to go over the sea without love).

My favourite from the cycle has always been the radiant “Absence” – and DiDonato didn’t disappoint, tugging at the heartstrings even more than Regine Crespin and Janet Baker in favourite recordings, with her luminous “ownership” of the opening “Reviens” (Return) and her pitiable “Comme une fleur loin du soleil” (like a flower away from the sun). So bewitched were we, the audience, with her “moth-to-the-flame” detailing and resonating lines of ambience in “Au Cimetière” (In the cemetery) that, when what sounded like a stray cell-phone tone broke the ending’s silence, the audience hurriedly applauded to cover the intrusion!  The musicians then, in turn, broke into the applause to deliver the final, exuberant “L’ile inconnue” (The Unknown Isle) – here done with irresistible verve and detachment sense of release from what had been up to that moment the composer’s longed-for and sadly unrealised “Toujours” (always) from the opening “Villanelle” – acknowledged here by DiDonato with wry equanimity, rather than bitter resignation to “la jeune belle”, with the open-hearted words at the end – “Ou voulez-vous aller? – La brise va souffler….” (Where would you like to go? – the breeze is about to blow….).

Having received rapturous audience accolades for her efforts, diDonato repaid us handsomely, with, firstly, the “Habanera” from Carmen (orchestra AND even some audience voices supplying the chorus’s “Prends garde a toi!” response here, in each verse!), and then what the singer called “a present to us in return from her part of the world”, a verse and chorus of Harold Arlen’s  song “Somewhere, over the Rainbow” from the film “The Wizard of Oz”. At that, even this diehard critic found himself on his feet, applauding!

But then! – the evening’s biggest surprise for me, however, came with the Bruckner! I had heard the NZSO give radiant performances of some of the symphonies over the years with maestri such as Franz-Paul Decker and more recently Simone Young, both of whom held established “Bruckner credentials” – so the orchestra had proven itself as a “Bruckner ensemble” in distinguished company. And while I’d been impressed over the last couple of years with Gemma New’s conducting of Mahler I’d never been one to “presume” (as many seem to do) that proficiency with the latter automatically guarantees the same with Bruckner’s similarly large-scale but vastly different worlds of expression. And I hadn’t been able to find any record of New having conducted Bruckner before, so this seemed to me like something she was undertaking for the first time.

Straightaway I was frustrated by the symphony’s opening, since New, after ascending the podium, very quickly gave the orchestra the signal to begin –  which meant that the near inaudible string tremolando with which the work opens was for me on this occasion totally inaudible due to audience “rustle” as part of the settling-down process. I SAW the violins begin, but simply heard the “E” of the lower strings “begin” the music! I wish she’d instead secured absolute stillness in the auditorium before beginning, and allowed the sound to magically conjure itself as it were out of the ether –

And then the surprise unfolded – not instantly, but as a slowly growing and evolving feeling as the symphony progressed that I was actually witnessing a superbly-played and wondrously-articulated performance. The symphony’s very first theme, for me had a pliable elasticity contributing to a parallel expansion and intensification of the sound as the trajectories proceeded, and with everything beautifully voiced. New kept the tempi of the different sections related to what seemed like a single inner pulse so that nothing had to speed up or slow down appreciably to properly “speak” its character – for instance, the massive brass entry featuring a minor-key inversion of the opening theme seemed more organic than disruptive in this overall context –- and how beautifully the composer used his wind players’ material to elaborate on existing themes when these variants were brought back later in the movement.

The majestic slow movement, Bruckner’s tribute to Richard Wagner, was just as successfully unfolded by New’s unhurried, but vitally-phrased tempi at every turn –  the first upwardly thrusting string phrase taking the lead in exuding emotion of a vigorous and resounding kind – while the deep brass, at first contained, still made so eloquently the perfect foil for the following full-throated strings-and-winds’ songbird manifestations. As the movement developed so did the urgency and vigour of New’s marshalling of the music’s tectonic forces towards and into a spaciously resplendent climax, one superbly delivered by conductor and players. However, it became as much a funeral oration with the news of Wagner’s death “capturing” this music for history from that moment on, the flute sonorously summonsing the resplendent “Wagner tubas” and their tones of sorrowful tidings, and bestowing upon the music a kind of immortality.

After this, there’s a lithe, muscular Scherzo, here splendidly directed and delivered in every way imaginable, the normally bucolic impulses of Brucknerian scherzi in this case to my mind worthy of elevation both by association and sheer exuberant excellence to the realms of “sport for the Gods”. But then, for me, it was New’s and the orchestra’s playing of the finale as much as anything else in the symphony that lifted the experience beyond my expectations, transforming what I’d always previously regarded as a somewhat “poor relation” of a movement to a piece that suddenly seemed bristling with nuance, impulse, spontaneity and variety while appearing to know unto itself exactly where it was going!  – (never mind a couple of false notes and a squawk or two along the way!)  And, what was more, as with the symphony’s beginning, I uncannily had another brief  “moment” of disappointment, thinking that New had begun the work’s coda too abruptly, and that what was needed was more time and space to “savour” the whole of what we had heard, and to bring the work to a “grander” conclusion. Halfway through the coda I found myself thinking, “This actually works! – in fact, it’s exhilarating!” – and by the end, my thought was “Wow! What a performance!”

Joyce DiDonato and her extraordinary singing will remain an ineffable memory for me! – but Gemma New’s Bruckner was also a revelation, one that I hope we’ll get even more chances to experience in times to come!