Auckland Philharmonia’s wind principals – Bede Hanley, Ingrid Hagan, Gabrielle Pho and Jonathan Cohen – take centre stage in a charismatic performance of Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante. Photo / Sav Schulman
Auckland Philharmonia’s wind principals – Bede Hanley, Ingrid Hagan, Gabrielle Pho and Jonathan Cohen – take centre stage in a charismatic performance of Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante. Photo / Sav Schulman
Auckland Philharmonia’s Nightscapes featured maestro Giordano Bellincampi and transported audiences from a Viennese ballroom to a mysterious forest.
Soloists Bede Hanley, Jonathan Cohen, Gabrielle Pho and Ingrid Hagan delivered a charismatic performance in Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante.
The concert concluded with Schoenberg’s Verklarte Nacht, showcasing the orchestra’s skill in rendering its complex themes.
The Auckland Philharmonia’s Nightscapes may well be one of the most downright enjoyable concerts of this season.
With maestro Giordano Bellincampi on the podium, we were transported from the dazzling sophistication of a Viennese ballroom to a soul-baring tryst in a dark, mysterious forest, creating the sort ofglow usually reserved for a rousing Tchaikovsky finale.
First up, Johann Strauss II’s Emperor Waltzes was delivered with loving detail and buoyant spirits, goosebumps predictably bumping when hints of a waltz crept into the crisp introductory march.
Once triple time asserted itself, we were swept helplessly through to its grand coda, including a delicately scored interlude reserved for concert hall performances.
Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante for four wind players may not be by the master himself. Its perfunctory Adagio is certainly thin stuff alongside the melting shapeliness of the slow movement in his similarly named work for violin and viola.
However, such was the charismatic ensemble of the night’s soloists Bede Hanley, Jonathan Cohen, Gabrielle Pho and Ingrid Hagan that every turn of phrase was honey to the ears.
The four Auckland Philharmonia principals revelled in often busy dialogue; Hanley and Cohen’s oboe and clarinet traded rushing semiquavers as if they were jazzmen, Pho’s horn was resplendently lyrical and Hagan’s bassoon dashed off brilliant Albert basses and much more.
After interval, concertmaster Andrew Beer lent his eloquent solo violin to a transcription of Traume, the Tristanesque final song from Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder.
Wagner’s gorgeous lushness led without a break to the apotheosis of the evening, Schoenberg’s Verklarte Nacht or Transfigured Night, stressing the strong 19th-century roots of this much-feared composer.
Richard Dehmel’s original poem was thoughtfully supplied for those keen on tracking every emotional shift of Schoenberg’s setting, as the strayed woman is forgiven by her magnanimous lover, while the orchestral strings took up the considerable challenge of rendering it in music.
Which they did splendidly, with Schoenberg’s ominous falling themes, flurries of wild abandon and passionate solos emerging from sumptuous orchestral textures, ending with that glow-inducing resolution in a bold major key.
