Long Yu conducts the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra at the Auckland Town Hall. Photo / Jink Cambronero
Long Yu conducts the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra at the Auckland Town Hall. Photo / Jink Cambronero
If packed houses and rapturous audience response are any indication, then two concerts by Shanghai Symphony Orchestra under maestro Long Yu were a major coup for this year’s Auckland Arts Festival.
Both evenings opened with four dips into Elliot Leung’s Chinese Kitchen: A Feast of Flavours, beginning and ending withprawns and sesame balls in the deep frier. This was a crowd-pleaser and a colourfest, very much thanks to the sizzle of exotic percussion; elsewhere, trite tunes that might have escaped from a big screen epic failed to convince.
The other Chinese work was Qigang Chen’s Er Huangconcerto, with pianist Serena Wang, a score commissioned in 2009 by Carnegie Hall for the celebrated Lang Lang.
Although this shortish piece set off intriguingly with the soloist’s subtle melding of Messiaen-like chords and the composer’s use of elements from traditional Peking Opera, the “romantic interweaving of piano and orchestra”, as described in the programme notes, brought with it a lushness that somewhat betrayed earlier promises.
Shanghai Symphony Orchestra has made its mark internationally, particularly with its Mahler recordings, and, on Friday, Rachmaninov’s monumental Symphony No 2 proved a finale to end all finales.
Long Yu’s forceful opening pianissimo hinted at raw emotions to come, culminating in rushing melodic blooms that registered like the musical equivalent of time-lapse photography, and 51 minutes of gleaming brilliance and sometimes whirlwind tempi brought forth an eruption of applause over Rachmaninov’s final burst of E major.
Serena Wang dazzles with the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra. Photo / Leilei Cai
It had been the same with Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No 1, with Serena Wang’s Fazioli incisively cutting through orchestral textures. Individual touches were appreciated, especially in the shimmering nocturne of a cadenza, although a fragmented third movement highlighted moments of quite terrifying orchestral robustness.
After both concertos, Wang and the orchestra offered a schmaltzy drift through Pōkarekare Ana.
The distinguished cellist Jian Wang did not disappoint in Tchaikovsky’s Variations on a Rococo Theme.
Jian Wang and Long Yu take a bow after Rococo Variations. Photo / Jink Cambronero
Relaxing the tempo of an Andante variation to indulge in some gloriously soulful playing was a small query in a performance that displayed the immaculate teamwork of a top-tier orchestra.
This Sunday, the Town Hall Concert Chamber hosts pianist Flavio Vilani in an enterprising recital titled Memoria: Echoes and Transformations, presenting his own music, alongside Bach, Brahms and Franck and the visions of Pākiri artist Star Gossage.
