KEY POINTS:
English cellist Natalie Clein and Finnish conductor Pietari Inkinen proved a galvanic partnership in the first two concerts of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra's 2008 season.
Clein's 1777 Guadagnini cello was in full and glorious voice from the start. Her response to Elgar's multiplicity of markings and directions was scrupulous to the last quiver of bow on string.
The blithe innocence of the first movement turned confrontational in the second and Inkinen made the orchestral weight of the score felt. The Adagio, suffused with autumnal lyricism, almost seemed to sob, while the Finale was painted in more ominous colours.
An encore of a Bach Prelude was quirkily, almost skittishly delivered, and a lot less effective and convincing when presented again on the Saturday night.
But Clein's offering on her second appearance, Tchaikovsky's Variations on a Rococo Theme, was altogether less meaty. After a series of orchestral bows and curtsies, the cello leads us firmly into the salon and, although Clein entranced with so many details, Tchaikovsky's score did not coalesce as had Elgar's on the previous evening.
Few concert-goers would have been expecting Pietari Inkinen to take to Lilburn's Aotearoa Overture on Friday with such unalloyed fire.
Here was our landscape presented in Cinerama-sound with sumptuous string chords and flying rhythmic motifs that almost had one ducking in the aisles.
After interval, Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony was another crowd-thriller and intelligent with it; a virtuoso turn that did not flinch at the bold architecture of the first movement and ventured that the Waltz of the third is more than just a pretty dance.
On Saturday, we had the world premiere of Tapestry of Life by the Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara. Earlier in the week, in interview, the conductor had described the Suite as "colourful, calm and approachable". It certainly was all of these and few contemporary composers are as skilled as Rautavaara in using tonality without compromise.
Stars fell in the first of its four pieces, with the plink of harp and glockenspiel, but the lush strings of Stars Swarming were replaced by testier shadings in the following movements. By the final Polonaise, few would have remained untouched by the grandeur of this stirring work. To have such a premiere in our concert halls is a rare privilege.
After interval, Inkinen's youth and vigour made one imagine how fresh and startling Mahler's First Symphony must have seemed in 1889. He zoomed between dynamic extremes and relished the mercurial mood-shifts, particularly when Mahler admits the less rarified music of the tavern and military parade into the symphonic canvas, a little like a 19th-century Charles Ives.
Now, the NZSO, Inkinen and Ives, that could be another winning combination ...
