What: Gautier Capucon masterclass
Where and when: Academy of Performing Arts, University of Waikato, Tuesday at 4pm
And: Gautier Capucon with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra
Where and when: Founder's Theatre Hamilton, Thursday at 8pm; Auckland Town Hall, Friday October 2 at 6.30pm; Saturday October 3 at 3pm
On disc: Dvorak/Herbert Cello Concertos with Gautier Capucon and the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra
Cellist Gautier Capucon is enjoying his second New Zealand visit and it seems to show on the concert stage. His playing in Strauss' Don Quixote with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra last week had one critic describing the young Frenchman as "the Don's ideal proponent".
This is his second collaboration with NZSO music director Pietari Inkinen. They first met in Cologne last year. "It was a crazy concert," Capucon laughs. "I did Tchaikovsky's Rococo Variations, Gabriela Montero played the Emperor Concerto and this was followed by the Tchaikovsky Piano Trio with Pietari on violin _ he's a great violinist."
Montero was Capucon's partner on his 2008 CD of Rachmaninov and Prokofiev Sonatas ("when we met it was like we had known each other forever") and he feels something of the same affinity with Finnish conductor Inkinen.
"A conductor must be a guide and bring everyone together. But you need dialogue to keep the music alive. Of course we all want to share it with the audience but I also need to share it with my fellow musicians.
"In a concert you need to be able to trust the people you're playing with one hundred per cent. Music making is such an intimate act, I wouldn't want to share it with anyone I didn't like."
Next week Hamilton and Auckland audiences can hear Capucon's Don Quixote and the Strauss symphonic poem comes up when I ask for the names of other cellists who have had an impact on him. One proves to be fellow Frenchman, the late Pierre Fournier.
"Fournier has given us one of the most beautiful interpretations of Don Quixote ever recorded. I'm touched by the way he tells the story so powerfully. He does so with notes of fire, but there's also a sense of emotional distance. He was a very elegant gentleman but boiling inside, I think."
Capucon doesn't admit to favourites when it comes to earlier performances of Saturday's Saint-Saens, but does catch the French composer's First Concerto with a nice turn of phrase _ it's "like fireworks but with beautiful melodies".
On his last visit in 2007, Capucon gave us the Dvorak Concerto, and his latest CD, with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra under Paavo Jarvi, pairs a remarkably soulful account of this score with the little-known Second Concerto of American Victor Herbert.
Written some years before Herbert made his name on Broadway with musicals like Naughty Marietta and Sweethearts, this is a work of ready charm, "a beautiful piece which should be played more often. It also goes very well with the Dvorak." This new recording is a marvellous showcase for his instrument, a 1701 Goffriller, which still surprises him with the sounds that it comes up with.
"I discover new things every day. It's as if a painter with only 15 colours had been given a giant palette of a million colours. It would take him five years just to work through all the new colours, and then there would be the matter of mixing them in all the countless combinations."
Before Capucon plays a note in concert in Auckland, his first appearance sees him taking a masterclass with young cellists at the University of Waikato on Tuesday, a return engagement and much anticipated after his successful 2007 Hamilton masterclass.
He worries a little about the difficulties of "saying not too many things in such a little time" but hopes that the event attracts punters from the general concert-going community. "It's so good to have the reaction of the audience when you try new things. It's great to have that contact."
