Talk about top-loading your season. The first half of the NZSO’s year is exciting for concertgoers wanting something away from the ordinary. There’s a gratifying amount of New Zealand music, including several commissions; a mini festival of Richard Strauss’s great tone poems; and a good selection of important composers of the 20th and 21st centuries. The early months of the year represent the most intriguing programme I can remember from the national orchestra. After August the music gets less adventurous but the stars come out to play it. Fair enough. Everyone’s got bills to pay, right?
The stars
The NZSO has a decent sprinkling of star talent this year. In a rare move, the orchestra shares an artist who also appears in Auckland Philharmonia’s season. It means that Wellingtonians get to see the year’s biggest name, violinist Maxim Vengerov, play Sibelius in August. The other major instrumentalists are violinists, too. Christian Tetzlaff performs Elgar in Wellington and Auckland (November), and gives a one-off solo recital in Christchurch. The fabulous Augustin Hadelich returns to play Tchaikovsky in Wellington and Auckland (August) – of the big names, he’s the one I’m most looking forward to. Among conductors, Gemma New continues as the orchestra’s principal, and Vasily Petrenko is back, though oddly, pianist Alexander Gavrylyuk gets top billing for that concert.
If you pick only one
Beyond Words (Christchurch, Wellington, Auckland, March 7, 9, 10) is the NZSO’s first concert of the season, and in Auckland forms part of the city’s arts festival. Conducted by Fawzi Haimor, an American of Jordanian, Lebanese and Filipino descent, and with Moroccan singer Oum and oud virtuoso Kyriakos Tapakis, the concerts commemorate five years since the Christchurch mosque attacks. The programme includes music by Reza Vali, Arvo Pärt and a new commission from John Psathas. Expect tears.
Also consider
Ein Heldenleben (Wellington and Christchurch, July 25 & 27) features the lesser-spotted Schéhérazade, Ravel’s gorgeous song cycle, rather than the more common Rimsky-Korsakov orchestral showpiece. French mezzo Virginie Verrez sings. Also in the programme, music from Lili Boulanger, a tragically short-lived composer who is latterly getting the attention she deserves; and Richard Strauss’s biographical-in-his-dreams Ein Heldenleben (A Hero’s Life). The conductor is Stéphane Denève, music director of the excellent St Louis Symphony Orchestra.
Mahler 5 (Wellington and Auckland, April 5 and 6). Come for the Mahler if you must – Gemma New is a fine interpreter of his music – but, for me, the interest lies in hearing how New Zealander Salina Fisher scales up her most beautiful piece, the piano trio Kintsugi, in a new arrangement for orchestra. Also on the bill, Adam Schoenberg’s climate-conscious percussion concerto Losing Earth, with soloist Jacob Nissly, for whom the work was written. l
