Solo violinist Ilya Gringolts. Photo / Kaupo Kikkas
For the first 10 minutes of Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra’s Mozart 40 concert, we were surrounded by the ear-tingling buzz of fireflies — magically evoked in Lucioles by Swedish composer Andrea Tarrodi. Conductor Eivind Aadland and the musicians totally bewitched us in a shimmering score that effortlessly, and sensitively, transferred the
elusive world of nature into the crispest of musical form.
Ilya Gringolts put his own, very Russian, stamp on the glittering snake of Prokofiev’s First Violin Concerto. The violinist’s opening melody, woven through exquisitely sculpted orchestral commentaries, was carefully deliberated, although he held nothing back in the wilder terrain of the second subject.
The central scherzo was earthy and confrontational, with eruptions of almost brute energy; yet moments of eerie tenderness were subtly accounted for, especially in the work’s final pages, which seemed to float away into its a land of icy enchantment.
An encore, Imitation of Bells by German Baroque composer Johann Paul von Westhoff, brought the later Bach to mind, as Gringolts spun some hypnotic textures. Fragments of themes seemed to escape only to be drawn back by the gravitational force.
After interval, we were most pleasantly surprised by a 10-minute preview of the APO’s next concert which will feature Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto played on an 18th-century basset clarinet.
