Music
Where was opera?
by Rod Biss
Classical music in AK07 had its own festival flavour; the performers were often familiar but what they played was mostly different. And in order to shake up our classical Kiwi ideas about Bach, rock music and even ethnic instruments, the festival brought over the Australian Arts Orchestra.
But where was opera? Early plans for Monteverdi’s Orfeo (potentially wonderful festival fare) just wafted away. Why, then, didn’t they take on Opera Factory’s concurrent, delightful production of Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortilèges? That would have filled a festival gap and provided a few desperately needed customers for the factory.
The NZSO’s sold-out offering was Mahler’s colossal Symphony No 2, The Resurrection, conducted by James Judd. The NZSO strings sounded luxurious, woodwind and brass solos were excellent, the huge chorus drilled by John Rosser were fanatically precise. Helen Medlyn’s singing of the fourth movement, Urlicht, was the sublime core of the symphony and Patricia Wright soared thrillingly above the chorus in the last movement. But Judd never quite let Mahler have his head, both rhythms and melodies seemed to be too tightly under control and his decision to put all the offstage players behind the stage, rather than placing the trumpets high up on both sides of the balcony and behind the choir – the original Mahler intention – took away the composer’s music-from-heaven effect, as though we were being summoned to Judgment Day, from the last movement.
Chamber Music New Zealand provided a varied series of hour-long “Music at Twilight” concerts in St Matthew-in-the-City; trombone quartets from BonaNZa, jazz from Crayford and Friends, the New Zealand String Quartet, the New Zealand Trio, “Bright Young Things”, the Australian String Quartet and the University of Auckland Strings. The highlights were Gao Ping’s subtly beautiful Bright Cloud and Cloud Shadows from the NZSQ, the NZ Trio’s magnificent performance of Whitehead’s Trio, and two Australian works from the Australian String Quartet: Sculthorpe’s Quartet No 8, which is by turns infectiously rhythmic and then hauntingly melodic, and Vine’s wild, passionately unstoppable Quartet. The University of Auckland Strings under Wolfram Christ were polished but unadventurous – why no local classics from these young New Zealanders?
The Australian Art Orchestra’s Passion was a collection of Bach-inspired pieces by composers who are part of the band. The music rambled, there were snippets of Bach to be heard, the counterpoint was unleashed from its meeting points, Bach’s Passion Chorale turned up as a humming chorus. It’s modern big band rock improvisation all amplified and electronically captured and treated. It’s fascinating and infuriating and can be justified by saying that Bach, a constant arranger and improviser, would have approved. Maybe – more likely he would have been horrified.
The festival’s closing concert, fire-wind-water, was given by the Auckland Philharmonia conducted by Giancarlo Guerrero. Gareth Farr’s noisy homage to Auckland, Rangitoto, was the opener and John Adams’s over-extended, virtual symphony Harmonielehre ended the evening. The brilliant showpiece was Toru Takemitsu’s From Me Flows What You Call Time for five percussion players and orchestra – the most delicately beautiful and brilliantly imagined piece in the festival. The percussionists, playing a vast array of instruments, were virtuosos; the orchestral string sound was like silk, there were delicate woodwind solos and rich brass chords, the whole work was a quite different and glorious tapestry of sound.
