Auckland Town Hall
Review: Heath Lees
Whenever the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra arrives with pianist Michael Houstoun in tow, you can expect something special. Friday night's Grieg Piano Concerto was exactly that.
No heroic bursting out with the famous tunes, no elasticated rubato, but fine playing and a musical glow overall. A cleaned-up, modern comeback for a work that used to be one of the most hackneyed concertos.
By contrast, Houston's Saturday appearance was with Prokofief's little-known, sometimes brittle, sometimes brooding Third Concerto. From the start he showed muscle in the toccata-like runs that power their way through the texture - but more glitter and edge at the top would have been welcome.
Opening the earlier concert on Friday, Peter Maxwell Davies' Orkney Wedding with Sunrise produced the usual smiles over its musical recreation of a whisky-laden Scottish marriage feast.
The last-minute arrival of the bagpiper (Marion Horsburgh) is stirring, but it peters out quickly.
Nowadays it's a challenge to make Dvorak's New World Symphony sound fresh, but conductor James Judd managed it. Partly he was helped by some fabulous solo playing (a cor anglais tune that seemed to come straight from the angels) and his determination to join the movements together almost without a break, giving further cohesion to an already cyclic work.
Saturday's concert also stretched its roots into the New World. There was New Zealander Penny Axtens' Part The Second, which the composer introduced as "abstract, a working with rhythms and textures."
Charles Ives' Three Places in New England challenges orchestras since so many layers of his "multiple music" fade in and out of focus instead of sounding together. Flexible if not completely free, the NZSO excelled itself in the boisterous Sousa-filled parts surrounding the dream-sequence of Putnam's Camp, and in the gentle evocation of the third movement.
<i>Performance:</i> The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra
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