APO's opening night triumph

APN News & Media Premier Series
Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra
Auckland Town Hall
February 17

Apart the distraction of an APN staff member spending the first 10 minutes of the first movement of Mahler's  Symphony No 1 busy on her Blackberry, the concert was a spectacular event.

The evening began with a mini spectacular work Tarantismo by John Psathas, in which he showed why he is one of the country’s finest contemporary composers.

The work opened with sombre sounds and bells which could have come from a Mahler work, but his contemporary connections and distinctive voice soon showed through with a few nods to Philip Glass, reworked Spanish Romantic themes and traces of Star Wars.

He managed to create superb atmospheric sounds with a sense of dramatic occasion and surprise like some of the great film scores.

Sara Macliver sang a series of Canteloube’s Songs of the Auvergne, giving them a acerbic sensual quality, the sounds of a wilful shepherdess rather than the luxurious sounds of the goddess which many others such as Dame Kiri te Kanawa impart to the songs.

Even the well-known Bailero was given a beautiful, personal interpretation full of magic and sensitivity.

Mahler’s symphonies are really like personal diaries written in music with the first one featuring the composer grappling with just what he wants to achieve. He seems to be trying to work out what image of himself he wants his music to portray.

Somehow he wants to convey his own sense of striving, of being a man beset with the problems of self and society. He is also trying to create a musical language thath is based on the past but which attempts to create a new means of expression.

For the orchestra and conductor the big challenge is how to convey all that. Conductor Eckehard Stier takes on the role of the composer himself and directs the orchestra as though he were the embodiment of Mahler. He does it by engaging with the orchestra, shaping the various movements and exploring the ideas which Mahler loads them up with.

The first movement, with its acknowledgment of Beethoven and many of the other 19th century composers, is well handled adding a certain edginess to the Romantic flow of the music.

In the second movement, Stier manages to juggle the contrasting themes and juxtaposition of folk and children’s songs with military sounds.

The third movement opening lament, which morphs into music full of angst, shows Mahler’s ability to create surreal music that is continually intercut with subliminal sequences under Stier's careful control.

In the final movement, the contrasting visions of heaven and hell and the sense of foreboding are intensified by the conductor emphasising the silences as well as the pianissimo and fortissimo passages. This movement, in which the composer appears to have visions of a flawed super hero with its two grand finishes, is full of dramatic effect with orchestra seeming to almost surprise itself with its accomplishment.

The intensity of emotion, the poetry of the music and the clarity with which all this was conveyed was a triumph for the orchestra and conductor.