Monuments To Beauty

Tuesday, 20 October 2020, 3:15 pm
Opinion: Max Rashbrooke

Monumental

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Friday, 9 October

Reviewer: Max Rashbrooke

Monumental by name, and monumental by nature: this was a massive concert, clocking in at a solid two hours of music, plus interval. Not that that’s inherently a good thing or a bad thing – although given the emotional intensity of the music, anything longer would have felt draining.

The first half was a Richard-Strauss-fest, beginning with his 1945 composition for strings, Metamorphosen. In places it could have benefited from a sharper articulation; especially to begin with, there was too much undifferentiated mezzo-piano playing. But there were lovely moments, too, from the thrilling, pulsating beginning through to the tight, sinewy climax. The orchestra, under the watchful baton of Hamish McKeich, absolutely caught the core of the piece – an undulating circularity and a search for continuity amidst the wreckage of post-war Europe. The title of the celebrated pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim’s memoir, Everything Is Connected, somehow came to mind.

Next up was Strauss’s Four Last Songs, always an appropriate choice for the NZSO, I feel, given the average age of its audience and their own impending mortality. And it was beautifully performed by the orchestra and soloist Emma Pearson. The opening song, Spring, was lush, almost over-scented in the accompaniment, Pearson’s powerful and well-rounded voice rising smoothly above. In the second, September, there were some touchingly delicate passages from Pearson and a delightful horn solo.

As the piece progressed, I wondered about the absence of the words from the printed programme. No mind – in the third song, Going to Sleep, Pearson’s singing was supple and intelligent. The violin solo was superb, as was Pearson’s entrance immediately after. And the piece was brought to a graceful conclusion in the final song, Im Abendrot, the whole illuminated by subtle touches among the brass and woodwind, with the ending elegance itself.

The second half of the performance was taken up – in the nicest possible sense – with Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5. Just as the piece itself is a study in contrasts, so was the performance. For my money McKeich got the big picture spot-on: it was cohesive and thought-through, the transformation of the ‘fate’ theme from first to last utterly convincing. Less in evidence was a precision in the details, especially in the first and second movements, where not all the entries were absolutely together, something particularly obvious in the quieter sections. The third movement waltz was also a touch flat in places. But most of this was forgotten by the time the fourth movement rolled around, announcing itself in a blaze of brass – a monumental kind of music indeed.

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Max Rashbrooke

Journalist

Max Rashbrooke is a journalist and author working in Wellington, New Zealand, where he writes about politics, finance and social issues.

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