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Auckland Philharmonia's Splendor Series Began With A Punch
Auckland Philharmonia's Splendor Series Began With A Punch
Review – By Selwyn Manning.
Auckland Philharmonia's Splendor Series is underway highlighting the threads of Bach's influence on latter year composers.
At last Thursday
evening's concert at the Auckland Town Hall U.S. Conductor
Jayce Ogren (pictured right) drew an impressive
performance dubbed “From Brandenburg to Bartok” from the
Auckland Philharmonia.
The Auckland Philharmonia writes how Ogren has become a renowned conductor, one of the rising stars in the United States, having performed with some of the world's top orchestras including: the Boston Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, BBC Symphony. He is a composer himself and is founder of a Seattle-based band called Young Kreisler which performs Ogren's work and that of classic composers Mahler through to the works of grunge icon, the late, Kurt Cobain.
On Thursday, the Auckland Philharmonia sampled two of Bach's Brandenburg Concertos, and then ventured into the brilliant disordinance tones of Schnittke.
APO guest John Chen
(pictured right) performed on grand piano and APO
Concertmaster Dimitri Atanassov led the audience on a
journey of force and melodramatics, performing Schnittke's
punchy, even crazy, Concerto Grosso No.6.
Chen won the Sydney International Piano Competition in 2004, and now at the age of 25 he has amassed a huge profile among Australia's classical music elite. His performance in Auckland demonstrated why this is so.
Schnittke's concerto certainly is dramatic, and clearly provides opportunity for an audience to experience the wonder of musicians at their peak. Chen and Atanassov met that challenge and delivered the composer's tale of turmoil and brooding emotion, finishing with all the power the Town Hall acoustics will allow.
The concert was sequenced well. The concluding piece was Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra. The audience lapped it up and no doubt will dine on the APO Splendor Series again this Thursday (July 14).
The APO writes that this Thursday's concert is titled ‘Framed by a Fugue’. It states it will offer an “iPod shuffle of 10 short works ranging from established greats Bach and Beethoven to latter day masters like Barber and Pärt.
“The concert is bookended by differing versions of Bach’s famed Toccata and Fugue, beginning with the original work played on the Auckland Town Hall organ by John Wells and closing with Leopold Stokowski’s thrilling orchestration.”
Can't wait.
WHO: Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra
WHAT:
Splendour Series: Inspired by Bach
WHERE: Auckland Town
Hall
WHEN: 8pm, 14 and 21 July
BOOKINGS: Tickets
available from THE EDGE, www.buytickets.co.nz, ph 0800 BUY
TICKETS.
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