Bring back Petrenko
Garth WilshereAN expectant full house came for this great concert.
Tall and elegant young Russian conductor Vasily Petrenko , music director of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, came highly regarded and lived up to the reputation with a crisp, clear and precise conducting style that served the music perfectly and elicited marvelous detail from the NZSO with exquisitely moulded phrasing, ravishing string sound and the merest whisper in beautiful pianissimos.
And he and piano soloist Michael Houstoun proved to be ideal partners in Rachmaninov’s less well-known Piano Concerto No. 4 in G minor Op. 40.
Not as overtly romantic as his earlier concertos, leaner and tinged with jazz influences, having been taken both by Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue which he heard at its premiere and by other emerging composers, it had exciting and sparkling runs, with jazzy and bluesy references there, but not overt.
Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 7 ‘Leningrad’ Op. 60 comes with a lot of baggage, comment and history, and it certainly has its moments of tedium, but if anyone was to convince us of its undoubted merits it is Petrenko. He etched every phrase and nuance into our memory eliciting some of the best, intense, yet sensitive, subtle delicacy and rousing richness in the playing from the NZSO players in this big score. It fought, it soared, it ate into our soul in this searing performance. And having gone through the close to eighty minute emotion-laden exercise the audience erupted with wild applause and a well-deserved standing ovation.
Bring Petrenko back here again soon please!









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