William Dart: APO rises to the moment with An Alpine Symphony

Giordano Bellincampi conducts the APO. Photo / Adrian Malloch

OPINION:

Just as mountains tend to dominate landscapes, Richard Strauss’ An Alpine Symphony was a spectacular peak in Saturday night’s Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra (APO) programme.

Written in 1915, this is the ultimate in grand romantic gestures, requiring mammoth orchestral forces to chart, with cinematic immediacy, a day on the slopes.

Not only did it furnish the concert with a title, but it also had the APO reaching across the Tasman for young players from the Australian National Academy of Music to ensure an appropriately monumental soundscape.

Maestro Giordano Bellincampi was an assured alpine guide, charismatically illuminating all the set pieces from a cascading waterfall to the mother of all storms, fired by a wind machine, dramatically suspended thunder sheet, and the rumbling power of the town hall organ.

Giordano Bellincampi conducts the APO. Photo / Adrian Malloch

He also did full justice to the intricate details that drive the score’s narrative, opening and closing with two spellbinding immersions in brooding night, while a thrilling ascent, moments of danger and various climatic shifts were beautifully caught.

The concert opened with another showcase, the 1967 avant-garde masterpiece Lontano by the Hungarian Gyorgy Ligeti. Here Bellincampi was very much a conjurer of sonorities, using fingers alone to catch the work’s opening swell from a single note, intensified through the woodwind ranks to a full vibrant texture.

Giordano Bellincampi conducts the APO. Photo / Adrian Malloch

Ligeti himself likened Lontano to the opening and closing of a window on a long-submerged dream world of childhood, which one could well imagine through the way in which isolated colours and images floated out from washes of pulsating sound.

After some re-setting of the stage, the first of Bach’s orchestral suites proved to be a bracing entr’acte, with a smaller group of players responding to the stylish direction of concertmaster Andrew Beer.

This was rendered with a winning combination of grace and sinew, from a noble overture to a succession of lilting dances. Oboists Bede Hanley and Noah Rudd were a considerable asset, particularly in bubbling trio formation with bassoonist Yang Rachel Guan Ebbett.

What: Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra

Where: Auckland Town Hall

When: Saturday