What: Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra
Where: Auckland Town Hall
When: Thursday at 8pm
Best not to write off the viola as the shrinking violet of the string family, bowing away in the shadow of its higher-profile siblings, the violin and cello. After all, didn't that demonic fiddler, Nicolo Paganini, ask Berlioz to score his Harold in Italy for solo viola, rather than violin?
And the French composer did, casting the viola as the melancholy hero of the piece, wandering through the mountains in search of his soul, eventually confronting a band of brigands in what Berlioz describes as a furious orgy of wine, blood and joy, combining and parading their intoxication.
Australian violist Brett Dean plays Harold with the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra on Thursday and he laughs drily when I quote Berlioz's wild turn of phrase. "The bizarre thing is that that's the moment when the soloist spends most of his time sitting down," is his response.
"But it's such a spectacular piece for orchestra. The fact that Berlioz has these long stretches that are concerto-like, full of vivacious, wonderful writing for solo instrument, adds another dimension which is part of the work's charm."
Dean was a teenage violinist who moved on to the viola because his teacher, a violist herself, "recognised something of the viola player in me. Choosing an instrument is as much a match of temperament as anything else. And, as a teacher or a parent, you need to give quite a bit of thought as to what instrument best suits a child's personality."
Eventually, the Australian would spend 14 years with violas of the Berlin Philharmonic, playing under such luminaries as Claudio Abbado and Simon Rattle. "I've always loved the inner voice thing," Dean explains. "You get a wonderful point of view of how a piece works on the inside when you're sitting in the middle of an orchestra. It's the workings of the machine, a bit like checking out the engine or opening up the radio and putting it back together again.
"In fact, I've just been playing some Bruckner quintets with the Australian String Quartet and I was reminded of my orchestral days playing Bruckner symphonies and how much that taught me about the architecture of these pieces."
Dean is a keen chamber musician and has visited us twice wearing that cap, once as a third of the Dean Emmerson Dean Trio alongside clarinettist brother Paul and pianist Stephen Emmerson.
The group's new Melba CD, Beloved of the Gods, features Emmerson's Papamina Suite, a tune-filled 16-minute arrangement from Mozart's The Magic Flute.
Dean finds it "glorious to get to play Mozart's opera. Some people look down on arrangements but they've always been part of the classical music world. When you're in a group and someone brings along an arrangement, it becomes part of the family."
There is yet another Brett Dean - the man who is one of Australia's leading composers and, two years ago, Dean played his own viola concerto with the APO. Last March he won the celebrated Grawemeyer Prize (with a hefty US$200,000 cheque) for his violin concerto, The Lost Art of Letter Writing and, next March, Opera Australia will premiere his opera, Bliss, based on the Peter Carey novel.
Yet, as a composer, he still salutes the pioneering spirit of a Frenchman by the name of Hector Berlioz. "In my early days playing with the Australian Youth Orchestra, we did Berlioz' The Damnation of Faust," he remembers. "And, at one point, he modulates an augmented fourth over the bar-line and obviously doesn't give a damn.
"I love that door-opening and ear-opening audacity. It's so different from everything else that was happening at the time."
