Philharmonia to play to strengths

By WILLIAM DART

This week sees the announcement of the Auckland Philharmonia's 2004 Vero Premier Series. Fifteen concerts, dotted between mid-February and late October, offer a range of local and overseas soloists and conductors, with repertoire running from the standard Beethoven and Brahms to the contemporary Argentinian Osvaldo Golijov.

Richard Wenn, the orchestra's artistic administrator, says this is the first series he has seen through in its entirety, although he's quick to add that he's far from being the sole decision-maker. The final line-up reflects the input of music director Miguel Harth-Bedoya, the orchestral players and, naturally enough, the soloists.

"2004 will be a season of consolidation," says Wenn. "This year Miguel wants to focus on some of the core repertory and develop areas in the orchestra that need attention. The public doesn't always realise that programmes are planned about our strengths and weaknesses as much as for the music itself."

It seems then that we'll be waiting until 2005 for the AP and Harth-Bedoya to renew their love affair with Mahler.

Wenn is lively when he remembers his London days, working with international artists during his many years in the recording industry. His judgments are invariably astute - Lorin Maazel is defended as "at his best when he's really pushed to his limits" - and he delights in details like Nikolai Demidenko performing Rachmaninov's Paganini Variations and delivering a trill that echoed off the ceiling of the Festival Hall.

It is through Wenn that we will be able to hear the Russian pianist in April. Auckland might just be "a pit stop between Japan and London" but there will be enough time to schedule the mighty Brahms Second Concerto.

Russian violist Yuri Bashmet is another contact from Wenn's RCA days.

"As Bashmet was in Australia it didn't take much persuasion to get him to jump over the ditch and do this concert for us.

"Not only is he the greatest violist in the world but he's also a fine conductor and some of his interpretations can be revelatory".

Both the 2001 and 2003 Michael Hill Contest winners have been enlisted for next year. Joseph Lin has been coaxed from a Fulbright year in Beijing to contribute a Concerto to September's all-Dvorak programme, and Natalia Lomeiko delivers the Tchaikovsky in June.

Lomeiko's programme is one of only three conducted by Harth-Bedoya in this series.

It is also the only one to venture into the international contemporary repertoire, but two works by Osvaldo Golijov are not to be sniffed at.

"Miguel is a great friend of Golijov and has just done his Three Songs with Dawn Upshaw in the United States. They are very lyrical and will be beautifully sung by Patricia Wright."

At the other end of the scale comes the season's opening concert with American diva Angela Brown offering "four killer scenes from Strauss and Wagner".

Wenn's enthusiasm betrays an inveterate fan, and he describes Brown as "a singer who will have the majesty of a Jessye Norman in years to come and already has the richness and the soaring qualities of a Leontyne Price".

If August's Puccini concert was anything to go by, audiences will not be disappointed.

This has been a wonderful year for local music, with two major events in Gillian Whitehead's Alice and John Rimmer's Transcend, not to mention a myriad of shorter Kiwi Snapshots.

Next year seems less opulent, although a Kenneth Young Concerto commissioned for Michael Houstoun and scheduled for June, is sure to be "very well written and composed with Michael in mind."

"And our 2004 resident composers, Anthony Young and Dylan Lardelli, have shorter commissions for the following weeks".

If the programme might seem alarmingly conservative to some, Wenn points to its one unassailable virtue.

"Next year we will be bringing in a few more New Zealand names, with at least eight being home-grown. It is something I'd like to see more of - the best of our conductors and musicians alongside some outstanding names from overseas.

"I'm amazed by the quality of some of the people who have stayed here, people who could have a major international career. Michael Houstoun, for example, is our longest-serving soloist - he was there at the beginning and he's still coming back."

Now, if all those local soloists could be given a local work to perform, then we would indeed have a season to remember.

The Auckland Philharmonia's 2004 Vero Premier Series opens on February 19 at the Auckland Town Hall.