Artists
Location
Auckland Town Hall, Auckland NZ
Date
April 11, 2019Pictures
Comments
added by
terrylev
On paper, the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra's "Enigma" programme seemed the epitome of standard romantic repertoire.
Yet this was music imbued with the energy and ambition of young composers determined to make their mark on the world; a spirit well caught in Joyce Yang's exuberant, fully-committed tackling of Brahms' First Piano Concerto.
We felt the youthful defiance of the 24-year-old Brahms in Yang's striding octaves and scorching trills; it came out in the finale, too, as she led the orchestra in a dance of bristling counterpoint and fiery Hungarian rhythms.
Edo de Waart distilled decades of experience into his consummate handling of Brahms' spacious introduction, an almost bewildering profusion of ideas and themes awaiting symphonic development.
A Serenade by a teenage Richard Strauss was sonorously delivered by 13 wind players and principal bass Joan Perarnau Garriga. They made a strong, exquisitely nuanced case for this slight but charming score and it was a particular delight to see these fine musicians, usually out of sight to us in the stalls, brought to the front of stage.
Elgar may have been 42 when his Enigma Variations was first played, but it represented the sort of breakthrough usually experienced by a composer half his age.
The great playwright and critic George Bernard Shaw claimed that this work took his breath away and, hearing this, one could certainly understand why.
From the start, de Waart underlined a sense of thematic challenge in Elgar's opening pages, before the orchestra wafted effortlessly into the first variation depicting the composer's wife, Alice.
Inevitably, the celebrated Nimrod brought forth sighs of recognition. However, all of Elgar's character portraits were tellingly sketched, from an evanescent Dorabella, cast around Julia Joyce's elegiac viola solo, to the stormy strut of a worthy Gloucestershire squire in the few seconds of the fourth variation.
Yet this was music imbued with the energy and ambition of young composers determined to make their mark on the world; a spirit well caught in Joyce Yang's exuberant, fully-committed tackling of Brahms' First Piano Concerto.
We felt the youthful defiance of the 24-year-old Brahms in Yang's striding octaves and scorching trills; it came out in the finale, too, as she led the orchestra in a dance of bristling counterpoint and fiery Hungarian rhythms.
Edo de Waart distilled decades of experience into his consummate handling of Brahms' spacious introduction, an almost bewildering profusion of ideas and themes awaiting symphonic development.
A Serenade by a teenage Richard Strauss was sonorously delivered by 13 wind players and principal bass Joan Perarnau Garriga. They made a strong, exquisitely nuanced case for this slight but charming score and it was a particular delight to see these fine musicians, usually out of sight to us in the stalls, brought to the front of stage.
Elgar may have been 42 when his Enigma Variations was first played, but it represented the sort of breakthrough usually experienced by a composer half his age.
The great playwright and critic George Bernard Shaw claimed that this work took his breath away and, hearing this, one could certainly understand why.
From the start, de Waart underlined a sense of thematic challenge in Elgar's opening pages, before the orchestra wafted effortlessly into the first variation depicting the composer's wife, Alice.
Inevitably, the celebrated Nimrod brought forth sighs of recognition. However, all of Elgar's character portraits were tellingly sketched, from an evanescent Dorabella, cast around Julia Joyce's elegiac viola solo, to the stormy strut of a worthy Gloucestershire squire in the few seconds of the fourth variation.
added by
terrylev
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added by
mollyredlipps
Joyce Yang Piano
Brahms Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor, Op. 15
Richard Strauss Serenade for Winds In E flat major, Op. 7
Elgar Variations on an Original Theme, Op. 36 Enigma Variations
If you like music of the late Romantic era, then you will thoroughly enjoy this concert conducted by the NZSO Music Director Edo de Waart.
Brahms’ First Piano Concerto was written in his early twenties. Not initially well received, Clara Schumann, a soloist in an early performance, said “the public understood nothing and felt nothing.’ South Korean pianist Joyce Yang, 2010 winner of Julliard’s Arthur Rubenstein Prize returns to the NZSO to perform Brahms’ ambitious and challenging concerto.
Richard Strauss was only 17 when he composed his Serenade for Winds – one of four works he wrote for wind ensemble. His father was principal horn in the Munich Court Orchestra so Strauss had expert knowledge on hand when it came to writing for wind instruments.
Edward Elgar’s famous Enigma Variations is an intriguing orchestral work featuring fourteen variations on an original theme. Each variation is a musical sketch of a different person in Elgar’s close circle of friends. The theme itself is the “Enigma”. “The Enigma I will not explain,” explained Elgar enigmatically, “its ‘dark saying’ must be left unguessed”. The Nimrod variation recently featured in the 2017 film Dunkirk.