Fresh blood hits right note for a grand year

Eckehard Stier conducts during the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra's first Open Day. Photo / Dean Purcell

The title of Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra's first programme, A New Beginning, under its newly appointed music director Eckehard Stier, lived up to its promise of a good year. Stier was at the helm for some of the orchestra's biggest triumphs, such as August's twin peaks of Madame Butterfly and a tumultuous Mahler 6 _ but the German conductor also took on front-line duties at the orchestra's first Open Day.

Returning conductors and soloists invariably acknowledge the APO's increasing professionalism, and the year gave us many memorable concerto turns. Who could forget French pianist Cedric Tiberghien's sparkling Ravel? Or Australian violist Brett Dean taking us to Italy with Berlioz's Harold and, just a few weeks ago, Michael Collins' electrifying F minor Clarinet Concerto by Weber?

It's worth noting, too, that Dean and Collins were both working with Baldur Bronnimann, one of the APO's best batonmeisters.

Roy Goodman, the orchestra's principal guest conductor, left us in October with a lithe Eroica Symphony that shattered the expectations of many, although the Englishman's very finest two hours came two weeks earlier, with his magisterial reading of Haydn's The Creation.

New Zealanders have certainly embraced Haydn in his big year. Perhaps we, in our relatively new country, take heart from the life of a wheelwright's son who became a major creative force in Europe; a man who was as happy to arrange hundreds of folk songs as write for symphonic posterity.

While the New Zealand String Quartet's presentation of Haydn's Seven Last Words was burdened by gimmicky "staging", complete with animated Nigel Brown painting, the Quartet's Tiki Tour of the composer's quartets from Opus 1 to Opus 103 was an engrossing revelation.

A number of Chamber Music New Zealand's visiting artists, including the Tokyo and St Lawrence String Quartets, offered Haydn as well. Best of all, the St Lawrence foursome put us on the international circuit by including John Adams' latest.

Haydn had his turn with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra in July, when Mark Wigglesworth charmed us with the composer's scampish 90th Symphony but, in general, the NZSO's strengths lay in its soloists.

Back in March, Cho Liang Lin caught the yearning soul of Barber's Violin Concerto while, mid-year, Alexander Melnikov played Brahms' First Piano Concerto with such passion that even that inveterate Brahms-hater, Tchaikovsky, might have been won over.

Wagner, who was also not exactly smitten with Brahms, would doubtlessly have doffed his cap in August when Pinchas Zukerman and wife Amanda Forsyth brought an intensity worthy of Tristan to Brahms' Double Concerto.

While the NZSO's New Zealand content balanced the historic (Jack Body and Anthony Watson) with two shortish recent scores by John Psathas and Chris Cree Brown, the APO premiered the substantial and witty Anastasis by its resident composer, Chris Adams, who takes up Otago's Mozart Fellowship next year.

Peter Scholes' Auckland Chamber Orchestra has been valiantly keeping up the local quota with September's major retrospective of Eve de Castro-Robinson's music and the teasingly titled Wax Lyrical two months earlier. This concert presented a younger set of composers, ranging from Michael Norris and Dylan Lardelli to Karlo Margetic, Samuel Holloway and Robin Toan; a selection hip enough to let us hear the score that won Chris Gendall his SOUNZ Contemporary Prize last year - the Wax Lyrical that gave the concert its name.

175 East's only event for the year frustratingly clashed with Zukerman and James Judd's transcendent Elgar evening. After hearing a recording of the concert, I have every confidence to recommend that new music enthusiasts should watch out for Radio New Zealand's broadcast of the programme next year.

Radio listeners can always catch up with Karlheinz Company concerts on Kate Mead's lively Sound Lounge line-ups, but the group's October concert proved that sound alone is not enough to catch the Zen theatrics of Samuel Holloway's gong in James Tenney's Never Having Written a Note for Percussion - or the visceral excitement of watching Deng Liang conquer steppes of notes in Boris Tishchenko's Fifth Sonata.

On the recital trail, we've become accustomed to excellence at Auckland Museum's International Fazioli series, with elegant Cedric Tiberghien and Emmanuel Despax being the best of the best. Later in the year, Read Gainsford dared to put Shostakovich children's pieces alongside Liszt's monumental B minor Sonata at Raye Freedman Arts Centre, a cultural haven in Epsom, known and used by too few.

Far beyond the CBD, Brigid Ursula Bisley's energetic Waitakere City Orchestra has regained City Council sponsorship, and will be up and running next March while Uwe Grodd's Manukau Symphony Orchestra signed off another successful year to the strains of Xinghai Xian's Yellow River Cantata.

Grodd's directorship of Auckland Choral has revitalised the city's grand old choir, and other groups have surprised and delighted during the year. Rita Paczian and her Bach Musica put Baroque masters aside to enchant us with Brahms, Poulenc and Mendelssohn. John Rosser's Viva Voce extended a Purcell concert to include a Dido and Aeneas, staged by Aidan Lang of NBR New Zealand Opera, who has every reason to be proud of his own company's double bill of The Italian Girl in Algiers and Eugene Onegin.

Best of all, at a time when we look forward to a summer cultural drought, there is light on the horizon. On January 17, the APO closes its Lion Foundation Summer School with a performance of Shostakovich's 10th Symphony and, just 10 days later, Wellington's NIMBY Company brings us its much-praised production of Janacek's The Cunning Little Vixen.