Bezuidenhout's Mozart, the title of Thursday's Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra concert, gave little hint of the exhilarating journey ahead.
Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 22 proved a glorious centrepiece. Conductor Johannes Fritzsch fashioned it with style and substance so that we could enjoy a composer flaunting his genius. Soloist Kristian Bezuidenhout wasvirtuosic and playful with it, enjoying its dovetailed dialogues, with telling rubato sighs.
The Andante's absorbing drama lay in a struggle between its passionate minor key opening on muted strings and various lighter woodwind incursions in the major. In the Rondo, pianist and orchestra delivered its Mozartian wit with effortless grace.
Bezuidenhout's encore was a revelation, a Mozart Allemande, written with Bach in mind, but subtly deconstructed with tingling dissonances and lush harmonies.
The concert had opened with the premiere of White Horses by New Zealand composer Gemma Peacocke.
Composer, Gemma Peacocke interviewed by conductor, Johannes Fritzsch.
Inspired by a 1937 incident in which a woman plunged from an aeroplane into a choppy Cook Strait, Peacocke used a finessed orchestral palette to lay out an almost cinematic experience.
A mood of tragic inevitability was caught and sustained, from sinister low-register churnings to cascading swoops and cries. Drums thundered ominously between unsettlingly eerie sonorities in a score that well merits further programming.
Bohuslav Martinu was a free spirit. For him, music was not a matter of calculation, the creative spirit being identical with the wish to live and feel free.
This philosophy was well conveyed in a dazzling account of the Czech composer's Sixth Symphony, a 1953 celebration of life that, with all its riotous and occasionally raucous energy, makes you realise that he was a compatriot and soul brother of Dvorak.
Laying out a series of intricate variations over three movements, Martinu's bold textures and massive dynamic contrasts call for razor-sharp performance, which Fritzsch expertly drew from the APO. Decades ago, American critic Virgil Thomson wrote of Martinu's acid-sweet harmonies; on Thursday we at last tasted them for ourselves.
Pianist, Kristian Bezuidenhout and conductor, Johannes Fritzsch.
What: Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra Where: Auckland Town Hall When: Thursday Reviewer: William Dart
