KEY POINTS:
Eckehard Stier's debut with the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra last year was an evening with an unexpected coda. After a programme of Prokofiev, Saint-Saens and Beethoven, the German conductor put down his baton and took to the keyboard, entertaining at the post-concert function with his own piano stylings.
This year Stier has two appearances with the APO; the first tonight with works by Strauss, Dvorak and Smetana on offer, the second next Friday when he will oversee the ambitious concert performance of Strauss' Salome.
Strauss' tale of Old Testament lust and revenge is a far cry from Stier's beginnings as a boy soprano in Dresden's famous Kreuzchor. "As early as 12," he says, "I wanted to be a conductor."
Now, all these years later, he still finds himself caught up by the balancing of the psychological and musical that conducting involves.
"The appeal is the opportunity to work with 50 or 60 musicians, to give them your ideas and then hear them bring them to life. After all, I am not the one making the notes, it's the players who must do that."
Stier is aware of those who have gone before. Abbado and Masur receive plaudits while Karajan fares less well. "He is important, but not so fascinating as some. He is so vain."
The young German's podium hero is the American Leonard Bernstein and Stier's eyes light up with enthusiasm as he explains why.
"Bernstein is the biggest. He is the total musician. He conducts with the whole body, the whole mind and the whole person. It was he who opened up classical music for the broad public and, in what is a little bit of an old-fashioned profession, was something of a pop star."
Anyone who has seen Bernstein in action would not be surprised that Stier compares the art of the conductor to that of a dancer.
"It is important that when I am sitting in the concert hall behind a conductor that I can see the music in his body. This will help me to feel the emotions and understand what the conductor is thinking. In this way, the conductor provides a very important connection between the music and the audience."
Stier experienced a very special moment in Auckland on his previous visit. He felt he had forged a deep communication with his audience when he played Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony in the Auckland Town Hall.
"For me it was a first, and it was good that it happened in a hall that has both a historical ambience and a good acoustics."
Tonight's concert offers three works by Smetana alongside Richard Strauss' First Horn Concerto with the 24-year-old Australian Lin Jiang as soloist, and the Dvorak overture In Nature's Realm. Alongside the familiar dances from Smetana's The Bartered Bride and Moldau, one of music's most famous river journeys, is the less familiar From Bohemia's Woods and Fields.
Stier left us last year with the sounds of Beethoven's countryside ringing through the town hall; perhaps it is no accident that the APO is offering a Czech perspective this time. The conductor certainly seems happy with his new musical landscapes.
"Smetana has the power of nature in his music. All its colours are there in music that catches the very soul of the country."
PERFORMANCE
What: Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra
Where and when: Aotea Centre, tonight at 8pm
