Thoughtful NZSO
Garth Wilshere
New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, Conductor - Pietari Inkinen, Michael Fowler Centre, March 25. Reviewed by Garth Wilshere.
THE first major subscription concert of the year had a virtually full house with long queues for tickets when I arrived, a great start.
The concert opened with the Douglas Lilburn Processional Fanfare, very much a celebration of academia with its references to the song Gaudeamus igitur. Well played, but I’m not sure it was really the appropriate opener to this concert.
Nazareth-born pianist Saleem Abboud Ashkar played with muscularity, subtlety and grace in an excellent performance of Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto No. 5. Under Pietari Inkinen the NZSO gave fine support.
Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 is a popular one and Inkinen captured the rustic landler rhythms and naïve folk idiom well, and as is characteristic of him much inner orchestral detail is revealed, although occasionally it seemed at the expense of forward momentum with tempi often on the slow side. Certainly the orchestral playing had a real lustre in the strings with as usual brilliant wind playing, followed closely by the brass. Leader Vessa-Matti Leppanen didn’t quite play with enough abandon in his violin solo, which lacked projection, but was, none-the-less, well played.
The Wunderhorn song in the last movement had purity and beauty in soprano Anna Leese’s interpretation, and it was good to hear a fresh young soprano singing this but there wasn’t quite the involvement I wanted, with Inkinen’s slow tempi stretching it a bit. Overall, it was a carefully thought performance of this symphony.
THE first major subscription concert of the year had a virtually full house with long queues for tickets when I arrived, a great start.
The concert opened with the Douglas Lilburn Processional Fanfare, very much a celebration of academia with its references to the song Gaudeamus igitur. Well played, but I’m not sure it was really the appropriate opener to this concert.
Nazareth-born pianist Saleem Abboud Ashkar played with muscularity, subtlety and grace in an excellent performance of Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto No. 5. Under Pietari Inkinen the NZSO gave fine support.
Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 is a popular one and Inkinen captured the rustic landler rhythms and naïve folk idiom well, and as is characteristic of him much inner orchestral detail is revealed, although occasionally it seemed at the expense of forward momentum with tempi often on the slow side. Certainly the orchestral playing had a real lustre in the strings with as usual brilliant wind playing, followed closely by the brass. Leader Vessa-Matti Leppanen didn’t quite play with enough abandon in his violin solo, which lacked projection, but was, none-the-less, well played.
The Wunderhorn song in the last movement had purity and beauty in soprano Anna Leese’s interpretation, and it was good to hear a fresh young soprano singing this but there wasn’t quite the involvement I wanted, with Inkinen’s slow tempi stretching it a bit. Overall, it was a carefully thought performance of this symphony.
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