KEY POINTS:
At 36, Dutch conductor Lawrence Renes is a hot ticket on the concert stages of Europe and America. Last December he presided over the Nobel Prize concert with soprano Renee Fleming as soloist; later this year he will conduct the American premiere of Tan Dun's opera Tea and the first European staging of John Adams' Doctor Atomic.
In Auckland this weekend, his business will be Mahler and Bruckner, with Dame Kiri Te Kanawa featuring in songs and arias by Strauss and Mozart.
As a student in Amsterdam Renes benefited from the legacy of Bernard Haitink and the great Mahler-Bruckner-Strauss tradition of the Concertgebouw Orchestra.
"Haitink always listened to what the musicians offered and made music with that," he says. "For me that is the most important thing. You sit at home, study the score and prepare yourself," he continues, "but then you come to the rehearsal, and the orchestra does something with the music that even in the most beautiful of your dreams you didn't think of."
Working alongside Te Kanawa is also "the stuff that dreams are made of".
"I find it amazing that she made her breakthrough at Covent Garden the year I was born and she brings this tremendous musicality and experience and shares it," he enthuses. "She doesn't hold it back for herself."
Just a few months ago I did Strauss' Morgen with Renee Fleming for the Nobel Prize concert. Kiri does it very differently. In rehearsal, I started off with what I thought would be a nice tempo. Within seconds she moved closer to me and whispered in my ear, 'No, no, no ... slower, slower. It's like every note should be never-ending, floating in heaven'."
On Saturday, the fare is Bruckner's Eighth Symphony, a 90-minute colossus that, Renes says, is "deeply moving in the deepest sense. I'm still young and there are so many things I still need to learn about life, but when I spend time with this score, I feel things inside me that I've never felt before. I feel that I'm learning things about life."
Above all, he adds, "it is so modern the way Bruckner is trying to express such incredible profundity through music, on a level that had not been done before."
Bruckner's symphonies exist in various versions, as the composer amended them according to the advice of friends and colleagues. Renes is most particular about using the most recent revision to this symphony, which restores "four minutes of incredible build-up to the climax in the slow movement".
Renes is vehement, saying, "The music can't be without it."
Looking ahead, he's thrilled to be involved with the Netherlands Opera performance of John Adams' Doctor Atomic, the American composer's third opera, based on the skulduggery and soul-searching that led up to the testing of the first atomic bomb in 1945.
Renes points out how the audience at the 2005 San Francisco premiere was in tears when the Robert Oppenheimer character sang Adams' moving setting of John Donne's "Batter my heart, three-personed God" at the end of the first act.
In New Zealand he is pursuing his interests in old aircraft. A pilot himself, he has been visiting air shows and meeting fellow Kiwi enthusiasts.
When he's in his own World War II biplane, "you don't feel you're flying it - its wings are your wings".
And there is a connection between cockpit and podium, Renes says.
"I like to think when I conduct, the orchestra and I are one. When something happens, perhaps it's me or perhaps it's the first oboe, or the acoustics, but we can just lose ourselves in the music."
Performance
* What: New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, Auckland Town Hall
* Where and when: Friday, 6.30 and Saturday 8pm; Hamilton, Founders Theatre, tomorrow, 8pm
