The German cliché – at least partly motivated by political rivalries – used to be that England was das land ohne musik, the land without music. There’s some basis for that. The greatest English composer between Purcell and Britten was Handel, and he was from Prussia.
Few believe the Britain-as-musical-wasteland stuff now, but for many years, English music was rarely played in Germany. Stuttgart-born conductor/flautist Uwe Grodd had barely heard Elgar before he moved to New Zealand.
“I grew up with no Elgar cello concerto, there was no first symphony, he was a total discovery for me,” says Grodd, who leads Auckland Choral in the composer’s immense oratorio The Dream of Gerontius on June 23. He obviously caught the Elgar bug – this is the second time the choir has performed Gerontius under Grodd.
No one takes on a work of this size – 200 choral singers and three soloists; 90-plus orchestral players – once, let alone twice, without it having special meaning. As evidence of his dedication to the piece, Grodd flicks through his conductor’s score.
Barely a bar is left unannotated in his neat scribble, and Grodd says he spent a year marking the pages, getting to know the music in preparation for the choir’s previous performance, in 2013. Despite that care, he’s not beholden to those earlier musical decisions.
“It’s always fresh,” he says. “There are things we mark that are standard technical things, but when you come back to it you say, ‘Why did I do that? That was strange.’ You constantly improve things, and over the years, you learn a few more tricks.”
Over the years, you, well, gain a few more years, too. That suits Gerontius, which is about a man who reaches the end of his life and, in line with Elgar’s Catholic faith, heads towards purgatory with a mixture of fear and comfort.
“As you get older, your spirituality changes and your belief system changes,” says Grodd, who’s 65. “The things that you love and care for deepen in your understanding. A work like Gerontius, that is so deeply rooted in emotions and spirituality, gets richer.”
Elgar skilfully manipulates those emotions. Gerontius contains some of his tenderest music, but when the entire group lets fly, it’s overwhelming. What’s it like to be standing in front of that?
“It’s a beautiful, cosmic experience,” Grodd says. “There’s a fine line between allowing yourself to get lost in the music and sound, and maintaining the necessary control to co-ordinate everyone. In the best moments, you do very little because it all gels, everyone listens to each other and this huge jigsaw puzzle makes sense. Those are the special moments in music; that’s what you live for.”
Auckland Choral performs Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius on June 23 at the Auckland Town Hall.
