Spring and the joy of suffering

Sebastian Lang-Lessing is based in Tasmania. The Australian state has much in common with New Zealand, he says

Sebastian Lang-Lessing is based in Tasmania. The Australian state has much in common with New Zealand, he says

On the eve of crossing the Tasman for his debut performance with the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra, Tasmania-based Sebastian Lang-Lessing points out, "Tasmania is more like New Zealand than any other part of Australia. And we do have a very good orchestra. We are Tasmanian icons, just like the cricket team."

The German conductor, in his third year as musical director of the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, focuses mainly on the concert stage in Australia's smallest state, although it was opera that established his international career.

"But then most German conductors divide their time evenly between opera and the concert hall," he says. "It would be impossible for a German conductor not to conduct opera - how could you sacrifice Richard Strauss and Wagner?"

In fact, the two types of music-making support one another.

"You should make the symphonic music sound like it's telling a story and make the orchestra sing. When you are doing opera, you shouldn't just follow the vocal line but go for the inner symphonic construction."

As it happens, the symphony tomorrow night is Mahler's First, written by a composer who did not write operas but was a noted conductor in the opera houses of Europe and America.

"You have to make this work sing," Lang-Lessing exclaims, "especially in the first movement which should have an enormous flexibility.

"The colours in this score are just magnificent. All little stars that seem to come from nowhere. It's the creation of spring, in a way it's the rite of spring.

"And, as it happens, that's the period we are in now so it's a celebration of birds and nature and flowers."

I bring up the darker side of the work's third movement and the conductor takes up the challenge. "But this is good sadness," is Lang-Lessing's justification. "It's a very central European joy of suffering, it is not depressed suffering."

He describes the way in which the ironical Mahler does not hesitate to make gentle fun of Viennese music and how there was a "big, big, big crisis" when Leonard Bernstein initially took Mahler's symphonies to the Vienna Philharmonic - "they were laughing at them because they couldn't take them seriously".

This issue was solved and Bernstein's Mahler recordings with the orchestra are now classics.

It is not so often we hear Janacek live and tomorrow's line-up features the Czech composer's Jealousy Overture.

Originally written for Janacek's opera Jenufa, this overture was restored by Lang-Lessing when he conducted Jenufa in his home town of Nancy. It was an effective bridge between the dramatic ending of the second act and the opening of the third.

"Nobody writes quite like Janacek," he observes.

"There are few composers who have such a specific style that doesn't seem to connect with anything else, or come out of a tradition. A little like Sibelius."

Doubtlessly it will be Dvorak's Cello Concerto which will attract a few new punters and the soloist, Torleif Thedeen, is a familiar name.

"It is such an individual piece for every cellist," Lang-Lessing enthuses. "It can be radically different from artist to artist - the choice of tempo gives a lot of room to develop new ideas."

You should not necessarily discuss some things too much with the soloist beforehand, he says. "Things develop during rehearsals. The conductor has to be very open-minded to make it work.

"A concerto, after all, is a little competition between conductor and soloist. It is a dialogue; someone makes a statement, another makes a different one and, by the end, you reach an agreement. That's what makes it exciting. It's not just a matter of following and being together."

What: Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra
Where and when: Auckland Town Hall, tomorrow 8pm