Jennifer Koh's stunning performance with the NZ Symphony Orchestra brought the contemporary to the classical. Photo / Studio Giudon
This concert may have taken its title from Schubert's Great C major Symphony, but we didn't have to wait until after the interval to experience monumental music-making from the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra under Edo de Waart.
First up was American violinist Jennifer Koh, taking us, with brilliance and charm,
into the here and now of the contemporary — playing Esa-Pekka Salonen's 2009 Violin Concerto.
This Finnish composer's day job as a top-rung conductor comes through in the ingenuity of his orchestration, ably transformed here into both luminescent backdrop and gladiatorial arena for the dauntless Koh. A log drum, one of the work's diverse hues, made an unexpected Pacific connection.
Salonen's opening movement featured much zooming, in both his own programme notes — which deserve to have been printed in full — and Koh's cadenza-like virtuosity. The central movements, both titled Pulse, lulled us at first over heartbeat timpani and then unleashed a welter of fury described by its composer as urban, bizarre and Californian.
The concerto's finale, with the bittersweet title of Adieu, inspired the ever-persuasive Koh to exquisite lyricism; often of gossamer-like delicacy, but not afraid to bloom in a triple forte climax.
