If you’re someone for whom percussion means only bashy timekeeping, may I recommend Auckland Chamber Orchestra’s Two Concertos and Pieces of Wood concert (Raye Freedman Arts Centre, November 26). ACO music director Peter Scholes always digs up something interesting, and here he has worked with Auckland Philharmonia principal percussionist Eric Renick to produce three rarely heard pieces from the US trio of Steve Reich, Steven Mackey and Lou Harrison.
Renick acts as soloist in Mackey’s quirky Micro-Concerto, and Reich supplies the music for Pieces of Wood of the concert’s title, but the most substantial work is Harrison’s Concerto for Violin and Percussion, which features Auckland Philharmonia concertmaster Andrew Beer as the lone string player. Beer describes the violin part as rhythmically challenging, requiring precision and focus, but arguably, his is the easiest bit. The tough part is being handled by Shane Currey, who is assembling the kit.
“Shane has been amazing,” says Scholes. “He’s been making stuff according to [Harrison’s] specifications. There are two or three pages of instructions at the beginning of the score.”
The composer’s requirements include coffee cans, tin plates, coils from inside chime clocks mounted on an old guitar, and what Scholes describes as “a little spiral spring thing”, which may or may not be the technical term. “Harrison is very aware of the way instruments resonate to get expressive sonorities happening,” Scholes says. “People don’t know his music well, but he occupies a niche, slightly left of centre.”
A piece that didn’t make the concert’s final programme was Varèse’s Ionisation, cut for budgetary reasons. That happens often in Scholes’ world. The ACO is a treasure, and Scholes is among the key figures of New Zealand classical music, but these are tough times for his orchestra. This year, ACO received no Creative New Zealand support and was turned down by Auckland Council, too. Belts have been tightened, and concerts announced only when Scholes was certain he could afford to stage them.
“We’ve no facility to go into debt; we’ve got to have the money upfront,” he says. “I’m constantly assessing cashflow.”
ACO’s unusual ticketing model makes that complicated. The orchestra does no advertising, and to get a ticket you have to be on its email database (join through the ACO website).
However, concerts are free to attend and attendees give what they can on the day. “I think the arts need to be accessible across the board, for whatever money you have,” Scholes told me in 2018. The system has worked until now, but the loss of core funding means the ACO faces an existential threat. Even so, Scholes remains cautiously optimistic.
“We’re still here and we’re still doing it,” he says. “I love every minute of it.” l
Auckland Chamber Orchestra, Two Concertos and Pieces of Wood, Raye Freedman Arts Centre, November 26.
