Conductor Giordano Bellincampi's admiration for Mahler as an operatic conductor came through in the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra's Mahler 5 concert on Saturday, November 11. Photo / Adrian Mallcoh
Conductor Giordano Bellincampi's admiration for Mahler as an operatic conductor came through in the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra's Mahler 5 concert on Saturday, November 11. Photo / Adrian Mallcoh
Giordano Bellincampi, back in town for the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra’s last three main-stage concerts, stamped his distinctive and magisterial style on Saturday’s Mahler 5 programme.
It was a massive event, with the APO’s already impressive ranks bolstered by 20 young players from the Australian National Academy of Music, ensuringthat the spectacular sound worlds of Wagner and Mahler would ring triumphant.
Wagner provided a valuable context for what was to come — especially the prelude and liebestod from his Tristan und Isolde, a work so dear to Mahler that he quoted from it in tonight’s symphony.
Bellincampi captured Wagner’s special brand of sensuality, phrase by phrase, each bursting into its own harmonic bloom. Throughout, one was almost powerless to resist the fateful inevitability of this music’s soaring journey.
It was good to hear the musicians have such fun dispensing the pomp and splendour of Wagner’s earlier Rienzi overture. I suspect, too, that Mahler, with his affection for less exalted music, would have smiled at one cheeky tune that might have pranced from the pen of Rossini.
Bellincampi’s admiration for Mahler as an operatic conductor came through in his almost theatrical conception of the Austrian’s mighty Fifth Symphony.
The APO was bolstered by 20 young Australian players for the Mahler 5 concert. Photo / Adrian Malloch
The first two movements were empathic, dramatic entities; one introduced with stark fanfare, the other with stabs of expressionist hysteria, almost over the edge. They are unified by that hauntin Klezmer-tinged funeral march melody, subtly characterised on each of its appearances.
Principal horn Gabrielle Pho was in fine fettle for the third movement’s romping scherzo, as the orchestra explored a veritable encyclopaedia of triple-time ingenuity around her. The heart-stopping love song of the adagietto was exquisitely moulded by strings and harp, after a significant minute of silence.
Mahler closes with a rondo-finale, but this is no frothy Mozartian sparkler; rather, a very deliberated formal tour de force. Bellincampi was there to highlight contrapuntal coup after coup, until the symphony’s initial premonitions of minor-key tragedy were totally obliterated with a glorious blaze in D major.
