Auckland Philharmonia’s “Romantic Journeys” was the perfect programme to welcome music director Giordano Bellincampi back from Europe.
Capriccio Italien reveals Tchaikovsky on the light-ish side, its agreeable tune-spinning inspired by a Mediterranean escape from Russian gloom.
On Thursday night, after grand fanfares from brass and woodwind, the sheer passion ofthe strings indicated Bellincampi’s deep engagement with this score.
Even when banality loomed, Tchaikovsky’s orchestral wizardry and a beautifully sculpted performance saved the day, carrying us through to the cheekiest of saltarellos, and a thrilling race to the final bar, triple forte and prestissimo.
Cellist Johannes Moser is a familiar and valued guest in our concert halls, giving memorable renditions of concertos from Hindemith and Shostakovich to Lalo.
On Thursday night, he illuminated Tchaikovsky’s Variations on a Rococo Theme.
Choosing to use the composer’s original score, he unlocked the second variation’s brilliant cadenza. Throughout there was a palpable comradeship between soloist and orchestra, sometimes resembling an extended chamber ensemble.
Apart from a passing flash of rawness on the home straight, Moser effortlessly slipped from graceful to gutsy as demanded, surrounded by Tchaikovsky’s felicitous colourings.
The encore reflected this happy partnership – Moser leading the cellos in another romantic composer’s wistful take on 18th-century formality, Grieg’s Sarabande from his Holberg Suite.
Cellist Johannes Moser.
Seven years ago, Bellincampi displayed his deep affection for Schumann by, as I put it, embracing the bold idiosyncrasies of his Symphony No. 2, finding the flammable in these sometimes phlegmatic and very Teutonic works.
On Thursday night, Schumann’s “Rhenish” Symphony No. 3 released the musical equivalent of a raging torrent in its first bars, with conductor and orchestra intrepidly riding its bracing syncopations.
In the wake of this galvanic launch, the scherzo’s rustic contentment came across as a missing link between Beethoven and Mahler; and, before a triumphant finale, there was an impressively solemn gravitas to its preceding movement.
For me, the high point was Schumann’s slow movement, in which clustering almost Brahmsian textures were delivered with ineffable lightness, as one might expect from the composer’s simple and perhaps ironic directive of “not fast”.
