On Thursday night, the composer’s final and most autumnal concerto, written a few weeks before his death, featured Belgian Annelien Van Wauwe playing an 18th-century bassetclarinet, the instrument for which it was written.
With its extended and expressive lower register, it certainly put extra spring into Mozart’s signature melodic leaps, and the Adagio’s central section gained much in terms of emotional intensity; yet Van Wauwe’s consummate artistry came through in every note, such was her unfailing tonal sheen and immaculately nuanced phrasing.
Shiyeon Sung conducting the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra
Photo/Adrian Malloch
Not a musician to just stand and deliver, her gentle dancing movements seemed to grow from the rhythmic vitality of her performance. Touches of humour did not go unappreciated, nor her subtle and telling elaborations of Mozart’s original line.
Above all, the innate naturalness of her Mozartian vision fitted perfectly with Jun Markl’s elegantly turned orchestral contribution.
Encore time offered a short solo by the late Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho. The second movement of Duft impressed in its tonal beauty and Van Wauwe’s seamless integration of the melodic and the more experimental.
After interval we took to sea with Toshio Hosokawa’s Circulating Ocean, alas without information about the composer (a 67-year-old Japanese master) nor the date of its composing (2005).
Perhaps we were meant simply to surrender to Hosokawa’s great washes of colour, brilliantly achieved, moving from misty calm to storm and then back again — or be mesmerised, as we were, by its great orchestral swells, echoing the sound of a Japanese mouth organ.
Debussy’s La Mer comes with clearer signposts — three distinct movements, and a lucid structure that is easy to follow, from the two-note motif that fuels its opening pages.
Markl proved an outstanding captain for a memorable voyage, allowing us to marvel at the ingenious wave patternings of Debussy’s second movement, and thrill to the primal dialogue of wind and sea in the third, punctuated by those atmospheric and sometimes omitted fanfares.
