Big three lay cards on table

By WILLIAM DART

With only one concert to go in each of their main series, it's time for the three biggest concert-giving organisations to lay out their offerings for next year.

After a year or more of planning, budget checking and artist juggling, the Auckland Philharmonia, the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra and Chamber Music New Zealand have released details of the music that will be playing in our concert halls.

Miguel Harth-Bedoya, who must be in his final year as musical director with the Auckland Philharmonia, remains a major marketing tool for the orchestra. His is the first image you see on the cover for the brochure that outlines its 2005 Premier Series.

Baton blurred in action, the much-photographed conductor is not wading at Mission Bay this time, or locked behind shades, and his tuxedo is regulation black.

For an orchestra which has always championed the unexpected, next season seems a tad conservative. New Zealand composers are limited to two: Edwin Carr's nostalgic End of the Golden Weather and the symphony we will hear from resident composer Ross Harris in August.

Indeed, the only other living composer is 32-year-old Englishman Joe Duddell, whose percussion concerto Ruby, commissioned for last year's Royal Albert Hall Proms, is played by Colin Currie.

It is worrying that Andrew Clements of the Guardian summed this up as "anodyne contemporary music without any obvious purpose".

Couldn't the country that produced Gareth Farr, John Psathas and Strike have investigated some homegrown product?

Familiar names return, including conductors Marco Zuccarini and Steven Smith, along with soloists Angela Brown, Patricia Wright, Helen Medlyn and Joseph Lin.

Probably the most intriguing is Chinese conductor Xian Zhang, so impressive in the orchestra's Winter series this year, who opens next year with a full-on Romantic programme that includes Berlioz' Symphonie Fantastique.

When favourites do come back, they bring interesting repertoire. Patricia Wright joins Xian Zhang for Canteloube's Songs of the Auvergne and, when Joseph Lin returns in May, it's with the Korngold Violin Concerto.

In August we have the chance to hear Angela Brown in full Straussian splendour with the composer's Four Last Songs and, later in the year, Helen Medlyn sings Mahler's Kindertotenlieder.

Alongside established names such as Nikolai Demidenko and Pierre Amoyal, the AP has achieved a major coup by adding French pianist Marc-Andre Hamelin to its books. When he comes in September, he is not playing his usual Ornstein, Ives or Godowsky, but dipping into the mainstream world of Rachmaninov.

Other names you regularly see in your local CD shop include pianist Cyprien Katsaris, set to dispense Lisztian glitter in February and the great violinist Salvatore Accardo who is the kingpin of June's all-Beethoven programme.

The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra keeps personalities hidden until you open its brochure. The front cover, emblazoned "Our Culture, Our Heritage, OURS", with a pounamo "S" in the NZSO logo, is elegant. Inside, it is less so, with James Judd, Peter Walls and a handful of earnestly poised players posing against kitschy landscapes.

Still, let's not judge a programme by its ad agency illustrations.

New Zealand works are more plentiful this time around. John Rimmer's classic At the Appointed Time turns up in March and the year sees a series of commissions from five local composers - Michael Williams, Eve de Castro-Robinson, John Elmsly, Dylan Lardelli and Chris Cree Brown - each writing for one of the orchestra's ace players.

All five look fascinating and, certainly, the chance to hear violist Vyvyan Yendoll in Chris Cree Brown's Forgotten Memories is not to be passed up.

Once again living composers are not plentiful. Tan Dun's Death and Fire draws parallels between the linear art of Paul Klee and Chinese aesthetics; John Adams' Short Ride in a Fast Machine is a mere bonbon when we should be having this composer's major scores, such as his Naive and Sentimental Music.

The soloists, who range from Pascal Roge and Peter Donohoe to newcomers such as Croatian cellist Monika Leskovar, bring standard concertos with them, although, mid-year, Australian oboist Diana Doherty should be a treat in Strauss' autumnal concerto.

New conductors include the Hungarian-born Michael Halasz, whose recent Naxos releases include a gripping Fidelio and Finnish Hannu Lintu, a contemporary specialist who should have been asked to bring some of the repertoire he's associated with.

The real gripe, once again, is seeing that all three Composer Focus concerts have been allotted to the capital. Talking Finns, the opportunity in April to hear concert master Vessa-Matti Leppanen play the Sibelius Concerto, could well be worth planning a Wellington holiday around.

It is also irritating to find the orchestra's Made in New Zealand programme - with a woman composer (Maria Grenfell) finally joining what has been a boys' club - only playing in the capital. Indeed, in the section of the brochure that proudly headlines "Our Culture, Our Heritage, Ours", two of the three events are Wellington only.

Finally, there are those wonderful souls at Chamber Music New Zealand who share their music with the whole country from Invercargill to Whangarei.

With six main series concerts ranging from pianist Piers Lane to the New Zealand String Quartet, who shelter Crumb's Black Angels between Haydn and Beethoven, these always come with the assurance of quality.

Among the surprises are the Petersen Quartet who have some Sculthorpe in their satchels, the Shanghai String Quartet and the Australian trio Dean-Emmerson-Dean with a recent piece by Andrew Schultz that has Goldilocks and her three bears a few sentences away from Claude Levi-Strauss in its programme note.

CMNZ's bonus concerts include Michael Houstoun's return to the recital stage, playing Bach, Schubert and Debussy, and the startling Kronos Quartet, with a programme that is still under wraps. Its best-kept secret is its associate series that takes concerts to smaller centres. In March, the Felix Quartet comes as close as Hamilton with a Schnittke Quartet; in October, Double Lateral (a duo team of vibes and marimba) will play Te Awamutu with a programme that ranges from Psathas to Piazzolla.

The schedules are out and about. All that's needed is a credit card and cultural commitment to ensure our concert halls can remain a vital part of our culture.