NZSO at the Town Hall

By WILLIAM DART

Rachel Barton is obviously a card, and when she plays Beethoven she's a drawcard, as the box office for the NZSO's Friday night concert revealed. This young woman, whose repertoire ranges from Korngold's Violin Concerto to Nirvana's Seems Like Teen Spirit, brought us Franz Waxman's kitschy Carmen Fantasie when she visited in 2000; this year's Beethoven Violin Concerto seems perilously mainstream.

She tackled it on Friday and her playing often had a Mutter-like sweetness, although when her Amati violin soared above the orchestra there was sometimes a wistfulness slightly at odds with the stern beauty of the first movement.

The Finale was forthright in a very Midwestern way (Barton hails from Chicago), and the central Larghetto had her outpourings tempered by the cooler lines of the orchestra's wind section.

Saturday evening belonged to Prokofiev's Second Concerto. From the melancholy opening solo to the scrumptious slow movement, Barton's luscious tone served her well, and she had no shortage of fire for the more sardonic pages, especially the helter-skelter Finale.

On both nights, we were given the same encore, and substantially the same spiel, as if read from autocue. (It wasn't, I checked.)

Barton's virtuoso transcription of God Defend New Zealand was undeniably fun, and it was also fun watching mouths agape when she plucked and bowed simultaneously in a diabolic counterpoint worthy of the great Paganini.

The real cultural exchange took place on Saturday as Brazil and New Zealand met in the concert hall. Conductor Roberto Minczuk inspired remarkably sonorous string playing for the Prelude from Villa-Lobos' Bachianas Brasileiras 4; Bach and Villa-Lobos were both done proud.

Before this, David Farquhar's feather-light Evocation, written in 1975 as a tribute to the late Alex Lindsay, seemed isolated on the stage; perhaps the composer's delicate give-and-take needs more intimacy.

On Friday, Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra pulsated with life, as much through attention to the work's linear elements as to issues of tempo or dynamics.

More than ever before, I heard Gershwin when the trombones let loose with their bluesy whoops in the final movement.

The Saturday concert signed off with Schumann's Rhenish Symphony. This often recalcitrant work sprang to life under the Brazilian's baton and only in the fourth movement were there signs of Teutonic stodge. The horns, possibly inspired by the conductor being a horn player himself, were in fine form, providing a lusty spine to the first movement and, in the folksy Landler of the second, enjoying themselves almost too much.

The New Zealand String Quartet Auckland Town Hall Reviewer: William Dart To those with a fanciful sense of humour, the New Zealand String Quartet were joined by a fifth inanimate member on Wednesday night: on the stage was a poster featuring a giant bottle of merlot transformed into a metronome - a gesture to the sponsors.



I worried that the great hall might be risky for Webern, but his Langsamer Satz filled the space beautifully. Brazilian violist Ralf Ehlers, standing in for Gillian Ansell, is a simpatico colleague and the result was musical ecstasy; in the composer's own words, "a walk in the moonlight on flowery meadows".

Bartok's Second Quartet brought back memories of the group's Bartok cycle in 1995, but seven years on there was so much more confidence, and a marvellous richness and solidarity of sound.

The second movement has all the spit and fire that the NZSQ delivers so well, but there was also a new feeling of cohesion when Bartok starts testing the textural complacency.

Helene Pohl had already alerted us to the work's desolate, low-key ending and, in due course, the musicians illuminated these bars with a bleak, spectral beauty.

After interval a curiosity: four tastings from Bach's Art of Fugue. There were a few nervous moments but they were delivered with an almost viol-like purity of tone.

Schumann's Quartets are not standard repertoire in this part of the world, but the NZSQ made an impressive case for them being so when they tackled his Opus 41 no 3. The opening Andante espressivo was almost caressed into life.

In the final count, I found myself distracted by Schumann's fidgety attempts to avoid a first beat in the second movement, and the merciless dotted rhythms of the third and fourth. But judging by the audience's enthusiastic response, I suspect that mine is a solitary voice.