Wit and wisdom behind the baton

Matthias Bamert

Matthias Bamert, a favourite with the NZSO, is returning this weekend to conduct the orchestra in its first visit to Auckland since its overseas tour.

Two concerts offer American pianist Joseph Kalichstein playing Chopin and Beethoven, and the Teutonic bigweights of Strauss' Thus Spake Zarathustra and Brahms' First Symphony are leavened by shorter commissions from Dylan Lardelli and John Elmsly.

The Swiss conductor is popular with the orchestra. "He brings the culture with him," one player says, "with a very strong view of any music we play. And, as for Bamert's legendary sense of humour, it's when you least expect it, and fast too."

Another player also appreciates this aspect of the conductor ("You want someone up there who gets the joke") and also praises him him for being incredibly cool under fire.

"He covers all the tricky corners and you can trust him not to throw you any curves under pressure."

In turn, Bamert is fond of the NZSO. It's something to do with quality and chemistry, he says, "but then one tends to get along better with a good orchestra than a bad one".

Asked for special NZSO memories, he mentions a Schubert Unfinished Symphony "in which the orchestra melted in my hands".

As principal guest conductor, Bamert is proud to have premiered many New Zealand works.

It's too early in rehearsals to coax out a comment on Lardelli's Tumbu or Elmsly's Response, but Bamert is quick to say that our composers are much more serious than Australians, whose works often sounds like pop music.

"Your composers are seriously trying to express something and not just trying to please the ear."

His only concern with the NZSO's multitude of short commissions is that once in a while an important composer should be given the chance to do a substantial work.

Bamert has quite a base in this region, as chief conductor of the West Australian Symphony and principal conductor of the relatively Malaysian Philharmonic.

Seven years ago, Malaysia decided that it wanted not only the tallest building in the world but also one of the best symphony orchestras.

Classical music has taken off in Asia, with young audiences and a certain optimism that is very exciting, Bamert says. "But it saddens me that other people find our western culture more meaningful than many of us do. It's a wealth that is ours and if we don't appreciate it then it's our loss".

Bamert is a familiar name in CD catalogues, especially for his Contemporaries of Mozart series and he finds these do more for his name than live concerts.

"You do a concert and you get one review if you're lucky. If you do a recording you get 30 or 50 reviews from around the world. It spreads your name."

He has also put out six superb CDs of Stokowski transcriptions, brilliant showpieces that were once considered the ultimate in flashy vulgarity.

Bamert, who was Stokowski's assistant for a year, laughs at that concept and says that Stokowski just wanted "this beautiful music to be available for orchestral audiences and the sounds he gets are just amazing".

He runs over some of the licences that Stokowski took, the prize going to a version of Sibelius' Finlandia with its last five bars removed, recorded during the composer's lifetime.

And, as for that sense of humour, Bamert says he likes to crack a joke or two because there is such nervous tension in an orchestra.

"A smile can freshen them up. They're not just sitting and playing, they're exposing themselves to their colleagues."

And it's not easy to be an orchestral musician, he says. Their education can be as expensive as that of a lawyer or doctor, yet they will never earn as much.

* New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, Auckland Town Hall, Friday 6.30pm, Saturday 8pm