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Two years ago, Swiss conductor Mischa Santora was entrusted with the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra's silver jubilee concert. It was a grand affair and Santora who, a week previously, had proved himself with an impressive programme of Sibelius, Beethoven, Stravinsky and Nielsen, provided the ideal baton.
The firm favourite on jubilee night was Ross Harris' Cento, a medley from the APO's past repertoire, which the conductor remembers as a fun piece. "It was announced as a very brief and easy five-minute fanfare but, when I got the score, it was not quite what it had been described as."
There are no premieres in tonight's Invitation to the Dance, the final concert of this series, but Santora feels that "commissioning is very important to keep music alive", while emphasising that it is essential that we hear more works from the past 40 to 50 years. "Very often the second half of the 20th century is shortcut from programmes."
Although his own Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra makes a point of fostering new composing voices, a good deal of contemporary fare comes across his desk as associate conductor of the larger Minnesota Orchestra. In the near future, he will conduct works by Christopher Rouse and Jennifer Higdon, two of America's most popular composers.
"The composers who are played often in the States might be described as neo-romantics and, of course, American composers who go against that are mostly played in Europe," Santora says. "John Adams stands alone, a really interesting phenomenon.
"Obviously, Adams is a great composer and very successfully and rightfully so. He transcends the composer profession and almost goes back to the great conductor-composer figures of the early 20th century, like Mahler and Richard Strauss."
Tonight's APO programme is on the light side. "Light to listen to but not light to play," Santora says. "Big difference." The offerings include Khachaturian's breathless Sabre Dance and Falla's Ritual Fire Dance, but he singles out Ravel's La Valse, "a brilliant paraphrase on the Viennese waltz. There has always been a fascination in music history with anything that is in three-time," Santora says. After pointing out how much of the music of composers like Richard Strauss and Berg is informed by the Viennese waltz, he notes that Ravel digs a little deeper.
"It's a tribute to the fin de siecle and to the crumbling away of a decadent, overripe society."
Also on the programme are Leonard Bernstein's Symphonic Dances from West Side Story. "Bernstein is an underrated composer," Santora says, "especially if you look at the harmonic language, the expressivity, the vitality, his direct and uninhibited emotional appeal. He had the gift of being able to relate immediately to audiences. As he said, it is infinitely easier to write 200 bars of good solid serial music that one melody in C major that sounds fresh and engaging.
"His iconic status is such that everybody today still remembers this larger-than-life figure who did so much for American music."
He would have shared Santora's assessment of the joys of being a conductor. "It's an incredible privilege to be a conductor because you are constantly in the vicinity of the greatest minds of Western art.
"You get to spend time with the likes of Stravinsky, Bach, Wagner, Mozart and Ravel, and that's not so bad. A little intimidating maybe, but otherwise it's great."
Performance
What: Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra
Where and when: Aotea Centre, tonight, 8pm
