Pianist Haochen Zhang with Auckland Philharmonia. Photo / Sav Schulman
Pianist Haochen Zhang with Auckland Philharmonia. Photo / Sav Schulman
Auckland Philharmonia’s 2025 New Zealand Herald Premier Series, a cornerstone of the city’s cultural year, was launched on Thursday, February 13 to the palpable buzz of a full house.
Maestro Giordano Bellincampi, 10 years at the orchestra’s helm, brought his customary acumen and style to an unflinchingly solid couplingof Beethoven and Richard Strauss.
Chinese pianist Haochen Zhang illuminated the composer’s Emperor Concerto with a winning injection of youthful zest and vigour.
Relishing the composer’s broad flourishes along with more whimsical asides, Zhang’s sometimes impulsive momentum created its own spontaneity, beautifully attuned to Belllincampi’s meticulous orchestral weave and thrust.
Conductor Giordano Bellincampi with Auckland Philharmonia. Photo / Sav Schulman
The second movement remained a poignant link between a Mozart Adagio and a Chopin Nocturne, while the runaway finale positively bristled with energy and fire.
Miraculously, after this major workout, Zhang took us to Seville for a giddying dash through Vladimir Horowitz’s Carmen Variations.
After interval, Richard Strauss’s mammoth symphonic poem, Ein Heldenleben, may have reminded some of this orchestra’s groundbreaking performance of this score under Bellincampi nine years ago. How many realised, however, that this rendition, commendably tighter and tauter, shaved a full two minutes off the 2016 running time?
This soul-baring portrait of an indomitable spirit made for just under 42 spectacular minutes, from the striving, compulsive optimism of its opening pages to evanescent visions of gossamer delicacy.
Percussion added a shattering backdrop to the work’s battlefield section while Gabrielle Pho and her horn section rose impressively to their Straussian challenge. Incisive woodwind introduced the composer’s satirical lampooning of his critics.
Pianist Haochen Zhang with Auckland Philharmonia. Photo / Sav Schulman
Concertmaster Andrew Beer took care of the work’s emotional core with a memorable and demanding solo, fluttering, soaring and gracefully poising in iridescent flight.
The concert had opened with Claire Cowan’s My Alphabet of Light, the first of three shortish New Zealand works in the AP’s 2025 season. Although effective enough, why programme a student composition from 20 years ago when many would have appreciated hearing the music that has made her one of our most successful dance and film composers?
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