KEY POINTS:
What: Conductor Baldur Bronnimann with the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra
Where and when: Auckland Town Hall, Thursday, July 10, 8pm
Baldur Bronnimann made his first bow with the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra last year conducting Brett Dean's Viola Concerto, with its Australian composer as soloist. A week later, he combined the roles of urbane MC and inspirational batonmeister, leading the APO through a bevy of arrangements including Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition.
This Swiss maestro, sought after on the European concert circuit, was stimulated by his first visit down under.
"Classical music in New Zealand can be quite a minority sport," he says. "And that can make it very interesting, because in many European cities music is so established that you don't have to fight the same fights that you might have to here ...
"You have new ground to cover, new audiences to meet."
On Thursday, this man who just months ago conducted the British premiere of Olga Neuwirth's operatic take on David Lynch's Lost Highway, closes the APO's Splendour of Beethoven series. Beethoven may sound relatively conservative fare, I suggest, but Bronnimann will have none of that. "It is difficult to recreate the impact that his music had in its time when people had such a different hearing expectation," he says.
"If you came from a listening culture of Mozart and Dittersdorf, Beethoven's music would have stood out in such an extreme way. In fact, in many ways, historically speaking, it's more radical than some of the music I played with the APO last year.
"Beethoven was one of the first composers whose art extended into his whole life. Perhaps his life was a piece of art, because of his position in society and the way in which he voiced his opinions."
That most iconic of Beethoven symphonies, the Fifth, is on Thursday's bill but, he queries, are we as familiar with this score as we think?
"Beethoven's Fifth might be a work which almost defines our culture, but many people haven't heard it live which is the most exciting way to experience it. These days we can have Picasso prints in our kitchens and recordings which give us our music just the way we like it, but the performer's job is to give listeners a fresh experience, treating each piece as a organism that has got to be born again each time we play it."
Beethoven's Violin Concerto is another familiar work and, when I spoke with him, Bronnimann had yet to meet Thursday's soloist, 19-year-old Veronika Eberle.
"It's always a little bit of a blind date," he says, talking of the first coming together of conductor and soloist. "If you play a Liszt or Paganini Concerto, you are there to support the virtuoso soloist. But, with Beethoven, where the solo part is so deeply embedded in the structure of the piece, your contribution is completely different."
The youth of the soloist causes Bronnimann to reflect on his own early days - this concerto was one of the first pieces he tackled as a fledgling conductor.
"It seemed like a huge mountain to climb. I realised that this was such an important piece and here I was, with a soloist who had done it 50 or more times. I was really afraid of it. Now when you come back to it you are not frightened in the same way any more. And that's quite a shame because a little fear can be a good thing."
