One of the most moving experiences I’ve had in a concert hall came in 2016, when Auckland Philharmonia played Arvo Pärt’s Berliner Messe. I had tears streaming down my face within 30 seconds. This isn’t my usual state in concerts and I couldn’t begin to explain it, other than it was one of those moments when, in the presence of great beauty, the body simply has to do its own thing.
On the podium that evening was Stephen Layton, a musician universally agreed to be among the world’s greatest choral conductors. After interval, Layton returned to the stage and explained that he’d just spoken with Pärt, who was listening from Estonia and had approved of the performance. Wow.
The conductor has been a regular visitor to Auckland, performing other masterpieces including Bach’s B Minor Mass, and the St Matthew and St John Passions. He returns for Auckland Phil’s annual Celebrate Christmas concerts at Holy Trinity Cathedral, which seem less likely to lead to tears, but Layton’s a genius so you never know.
The closest I’ve come this year to that sort of emotional connection came in June, when Auckland Choral staged Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius. Pärt and Elgar were religious and both hid their faith – Pärt from the Soviet authorities, Elgar, a Catholic, from his Protestant father. But where Pärt faces God with stillness and near silence, Elgar overwhelms, with close to 300 singers and players. “[For the conductor] it’s not an out-of-body experience, but it’s close to being lost within the sound,” Auckland Choral music director Uwe Grodd told the Listener at the time. “You have to keep control otherwise the whole thing falls apart.”
The audience had no such constraints, and I was among the 1200 who stood in appreciation at the concert’s close.
It’s not in the music, but if you look at Elgar’s handwritten manuscript, at the end of The Dream of Gerontius he has scribbled in a quote from John Ruskin: “This is the best of me; for the rest, I ate, and drank, and slept, loved and hated, like another: my life was as the vapour and is not; but this I saw and knew; this, if anything of mine, is worth your memory.” The Gerontius was worth remembering.
Auckland Phil will be joined by the Graduate Choir New Zealand for a programme that includes Bach’s Christmas Oratorio and Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus.
Auckland Philharmonia, Celebrate Christmas, Friday, December 13, 7.30pm; Saturday, December 14, 3pm.
