Safe from any advancing storm

By WILLIAM DART

The NZSO's brochure for next year promises the orchestra is going to play up a storm in 2004, although music director James Judd confesses the phrase "probably came from the marketing department".

"But," he continues, "it reflects what I truly believe - that we have to make every concert really come to life. There is a tendency, through incredible recordings, to search for the wrong kind of perfect that sometimes sucks the real danger out of music-making. Our goal is to put the risk back."

I look over the orchestra's 2004 offerings, straining somewhat to see the risk factor in Dvorak and Paganini concertos, let alone Grieg's Peer Gynt Suite. Judd quickly stresses the most important thing is "a better balance of romantic, classical and contemporary music".

Alas, the one living international composer on the programme is 87-year-old Henri Dutilleux whose 33-year-old Tout un monde lointain will be played by Steven Isserlis in July. Judd has worked with the composer in Lille, and likes his "full-hearted, spiritual and uplifting approach to music ... that goes well beyond pretty sounds".

Among soloists, there are returning favourites (Isserlis, Stephen Kovacevich) and a few new names.

Ukrainian pianist Valentina Lisitsa is described as "an artist who is prepared to take risks" - which must explain why we are being given Bartok and Ravel.

Chinese pianist Lang Lang is ultra-conservative (he's playing Rachmaninov's Paganini Variations in August) but Judd, who has worked with him in St Louis, speaks with wonderment of his "great lyrical response to music, and a great sense of the dramatic in the second movement of the Beethoven Fourth we did".

We broach the subject of New Zealand music and, over Auckland's 15 NZSO concerts, there are just two local works - concertos by John Psathas and Ross Harris. Auckland composer John Elmsly has a piece on the Mainland tour in October - the nearest it comes to us is Nelson - and a privileged Wellington has a second Made in NZ programme which seems to repeat all the errors of last year's instalment with its line-up of all male and mostly Wellington composers.

Judd is keen to talk about Psathas, and is excited about "working with a composer of this class".

"After all," he proffers, "the composers are really the most important people. The composers should be conducting all the concerts. The whole thing's got out of proportion with star and virtuoso performers.

"There are so many composers in the world, but most of the music is rubbish. A lot of it would accompany film very well, or be the sort of compositions that would be wonderful pictures on the wall simply as colour. The hardest thing is to find music that has emotional, spiritual and philosophical resonance for us as humans."

I had thought that NZSO concerts were mostly aimed at a human audience, but Judd is on to the home stretch: "It's important to perform as much contemporary music as comes past one because even the wallpaper in the rubbish has its place."

My head is spinning at all this, but I'm still trying to cope with the rather stingy quota of just two New Zealand works in 15 concerts. Perhaps there is a grander plan. There is. "I wish we could set up more communication between the great composers of Australia and New Zealand and the rest of the world," Judd says. "And just get more New Zealand music going out there because there's music of such substance and such diversity here."

But the question still remains unanswered. Why, if there is such substance and diversity, are there only two works over 15 programmes?

Apparently concerts are the tip of the NZSO iceberg. There are the reading workshops for young composers and what looks like being a regular string of Naxos CD releases.

"Klaus Heymann is very clever," Judd confides. "He buys space in all of the great record stores around the world. Wherever you go, if you see any classical music, you'll see Naxos and if you see Naxos, you'll see the NZSO."

He mentions the NZSO's upcoming releases of music by Sculthorpe, Elgar, Tippett ... but there are no New Zealanders on the list.

But perhaps there may be a place for Dean Hapeta or Che Fu on the NZSO billings one day. Judd is eager to speak of his dream of getting the "rugged anger of rap alongside Beethoven on the platform" - fear not, Aucklanders, Ludwig's partners for both of his 2004 appearances will be Dutilleux, Ravel, Mozart and Schumann.

He feels that Beethoven "would really understand and sympathise with the anger and frustration behind rap, if not the detail of the lyrics".

"We need more composers to stop writing pretty, silly things and to look to the state of the world like the great composers of the past and make music that matters and speaks about the environment and speaks about politics and hypocrisy. We need to get to grips with the real issues of today in popular culture and rap music does it a bloody sight better."

This is powerful oratory, but falls a little flat when 2004 delivers such emphatically non-controversial fare as Schumann's Spring Symphony and Mendelssohn's G minor Piano Concerto.

With the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra Bill moving from select committee back to the House, a bill that would give the orchestra unparalleled freedom and security as a Crown entity, one can only hope there are firmly worded clauses about the need to get more New Zealand music in front of New Zealanders. Who knows, one day, we might have our own music on every programme ...