Freelancing cellist finds home with NZSO

Andrew Joyce relished playing on a stage that Mahler once stood on. Photo / Supplied

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra patrons may have noticed the orchestra has a new principal cellist.

Andrew Joyce is a young Englishman who describes his musical career before coming to our country six months ago as "five years freelancing in London". That included a year spent, on and off, touring with the London Symphony Orchestra across the United States playing Prokofiev under Russian conductor Valery Gergiev, whom Joyce has no qualms about describing as "a real forcefield".

Even in his relatively short time as a professional musician, Joyce has experienced a wide range of conductors - some inspiring, some less so. He dislikes those who meet the orchestra with unflinching preconceived ideas about the scores to be tackled.

"It's good when a conductor might start us off and then stand back and listen to what we musicians can do with the music, what we're bringing to it," he says.

Joyce counts himself fortunate that he was playing with the NZSO during its European tour under Pietari Inkinen last year. Predictably, the Vienna concert was a high point.

"I'd been to the Musikverein as a member of the audience but had never actually played there," he says. "It was quite something to be there on the very same floorboards that Mahler once stood on."

Although Joyce has guested as principal cello with the Bournemouth Symphony and the Royal Philharmonic, he will not miss his days of back-desk freelancing.

"You get very good at sight-reading," he laughs. "Sometimes, though, I wouldn't remember the next morning what I had been playing the night before."

Now, heading the NZSO cellos, he has specific responsibilities.

"One has to ensure that the sound of the section is sufficiently blended and sometimes it can be quite a challenge to move out of that group sound to play a few phrases of solo cello here and there."

He cherishes more expansive solos, as in the slow movement of Brahms' Second Piano Concerto, which the NZSO has scheduled for later this year. In the same Wellington-only series Joyce will play alongside violinist Mikhail Ovrutsky in the Brahms Double Concerto.

Tomorrow afternoon Joyce has the solo spot to himself in the Schumann Cello Concerto with Bach Musica, under Rita Paczian, who has paired the work with Schumann's rarely-heard Mass in C minor.

The Wellington-based cellist, who came up to Auckland last weekend for a full day's Schumann rehearsal and returned home to go straight to an NZSO rehearsal, remarks drily that "these are the sort of schedules I used to have freelancing in London".

This is the first time Joyce has performed the Schumann concerto with an orchestra but he is passionate about the composer's music for his instrument.

"Schumann's the ultimate romantic. Unpredictable, passionate and if he writes something that's almost unplayable, it's often in his search for a lyrical melody."

Joyce returns to Auckland in two weeks with his violist wife, Julia, and two English violinist colleagues. Playing as the Puertas Quartet, they offer works by Haydn and Zemlinsky before joining Stephen De Pledge in the Elgar Piano Quintet. The Zemlinsky had been a set piece when the group played on the competition circuit a few years back but they grew extremely fond of it.

"Its language is so fascinating, a mix of Mahlerian late romantic and later serial music."

He confesses that his ultimate dream would be to play in a professional string quartet - the most demanding of chamber music groups but "so many composers in the 19th and early 20th century put so much of themselves into these works".

Performance

What: Bach Musica

Where and when: Holy Trinity Cathedral, tomorrow at 2pm

What: Puertas Quartet

Where and when: University of Auckland Music Theatre, Sunday, May 1, at 5pm