APO prepares to swing into 2018

French pianist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet opens the APO's New Zealand Herald premier series in February.

Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra will use 2018 to target a diverse audience more than ever before.

The APO this week unveiled its 2018 season with Hamish McKeich conducting a sampling of pleasures to come, punctuated by announcements and greetings, including a big screen welcome from Music Director Giordano Bellincampi, whose contract has been extended to 2021.

Opening with Saint-Saens' Organ Symphony and signing off with Elgar's Enigma Variations, some of the music might point to a slightly more conservative season ahead. However, there are strong indications the orchestra will continue to cement its reputation for artistic innovation.

Take, for example, this free sampling of highlights from the 2018 season; it was live-streamed, as many of the APO's performances now are, to audiences around the world.
Salina Fisher's prize-winning Rainphase also featured as a teaser for next November's A Woman's Place, a concert marking the 125th anniversary of women's suffrage, to be conducted by Tianyi Lu.

APO chief executive Barbara Glaser says the orchestra is celebrating a milestone and making a statement, noting women are still very much under-represented on the podium.
Ronan Tighe, the APO's director of artistic planning, is proud Lu is not the only woman to take up conducting duties for the APO next year. Kiwi Gemma New takes up a baton in May while livewire Chinese conductor Xian Zhang returns in September with an all-Russian programme.

Tighe also puts great store in reaching an audience beyond the Beethoven, Brahms and Bruckner belt.

After the triumph of this year's David Bowie Starman concert, boogie fever will infect the Auckland Town Hall in June for APO Does Disco, followed by the smooth jazz of Australian trumpeter James Morrison in August and pop with the Koi Boys in October.

The APO has always taken into account audiences of the future, and two family concerts aim at the young. In July, the Live Cinema event has the musicians providing the soundtrack for The Gruffalo and The Gruffalo's Child. Three months later, The Composer is Dead, a "symphonic murder mystery" with script by Lemony Snicket and music by Nathanial Stookey, promises to be funny, buoyant and engaging as one San Francisco critic found its 2009 premiere.

Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra launched its 2018 season this week, signalling continued commitment toward innovation.

Turning to the roster of guest soloists and conductors, Tighe says many of them are happy to return to an orchestra they hold in such esteem.

Ebullient French pianist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet opens the main New Zealand Herald premier series in February with an Emperor Concerto that should live up to its nickname.

Violinist Michael Barenboim follows his 2015 Schoenberg concerto with Sibelius in May and, although one welcomes back German cellist Alban Gerhardt next August, why must it be with a Saint-Saens concerto we heard just two months ago?

Eminent maestros such as Lionel Bringuier, Alan Buribayev and Carlos Miguel Prieto return while Bellincampi takes the helm for nine of the concerts. In July, he brings a dash of Danish with works by Poul Ruders and Nielsen; launching the year with a new commission from Eve de Castro-Robinson, he closes it with Mahler and Schubert sung by German baritone Thomas E. Bauer.

There will be no winter series in 2018, which is good reason to catch next month's New Directions concert, with American minimalist Philip Glass as a gleaming centrepiece between Debussy and Schoenberg. Balancing this loss, the orchestra's Bayleys Great Classics series extends to five concerts, starting in February with Veronika Eberle playing the Schumann Violin Concerto on both sides of the Waitemata Harbour.

It's also disappointing to see the APO's composer residency put on hold, but I'm told funds will be diverted into commissioning more NZ music. April does, indeed, see a major local premiere.

Ross Harris' Face is another multimedia collaboration with poet Vincent O'Sullivan and artists Barry Cleavin and Tim Gruchy. It explores the composer's familiar WWI territory, a tribute to the distinguished plastic surgeon Sir Harold Gillies who restored so many damaged faces and broken spirits of returned soldiers.

While the APO flexes global muscles next year, co-commissioning Symphonic Movements by English composer Marc-Anthony Turnage with Oregon Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, it also acknowledges good music isn't restricted to the town hall.

Three In Your Neighbourhood concerts showcase smaller forces, marching off with Stravinsky's Soldier's Tale playing Takapuna and St Heliers in June.