Three big Auckland concerts

This is a big week for Auckland orchestral music with major performances from the ACO, APO and NZSO

The Auckland Chamber Orchestra started their season with a programme typical of the fine programming they have been providing over the past few years.

The concert in their new home, The Raye Freedman Centre consisted of Mozart’s Symphony No 39, Shostakovich's Cello Concerto and the rarely played Concerto for Strings by Nino Rota.

Nino Rota was a major writer of film music including most of Fellini’s films and his concerto like much great film music was full of urgent and dramatic sequences as well as atmospheric passages.

The orchestra gave a superb interpretation with some crisp solo work from concert master, Dianna Cochrane.

The soloist for the Shostakovich was the 15 year old Santiago Canon Valencia who is currently studying at Waikato University.

He gave a technically brilliant performance coaxing out the melancholic and lyrical aspects of the piece with the orchestra giving the work a taut, aggressive quality. The one flaw in the performance was that the single-minded focus of the cellist allowed for no self expression in his face or body movements.

The orchestra’s playing of the Mozart symphony was extremely competent but never seemed to entirely imbue the piece with the restless intensity which lurks beneath the elegant surface of the work.

This Friday the NZSO will be having their first major Auckland concert with one of the great piano concertos and one of the great symphonies

Mahler’s Symphony No 4 is an exploration of youth and innocence but it is also about the present danger and menace. Like all his works, he attempts to balance the dichotomies of the human condition, about youth, mortality angst and serenity

The New Zealand soprano Anna Leese will be singing the fourth movement song Des Knaben Wunderhorn which speaks of the joys of heaven but also tells that heavenly joy is reached through death. The lyrics are accompanied by menacing and violent music in contrast to the opening bright tones of the flutes and woodwinds which characterize the beginning.

Playing the massive Emperor Concerto by Beethoven will be Saleem Abboud Ashkar who has been performing with some of the worlds leading conductors including Barenboim, Muti and Chailly. He is highly regarded for his combination of technical mastery and poetic insight. His appearances in New Zealand are considered to be a major coup. The concert opens with a stirring fanfare by the great New Zealand composer Douglas Lilburn.

On Thursday in the Auckland Town Hall will be the APO’s Arabian Night the first in the Great Classics Series

The concert features two all-time favourites: Dvořák’s magnificent Cello Concerto played by world-renowned cellist David Geringas, and Rimsky-Korsakov’s exotic Scheherazade. Garry Walker, a former principal guest conductor of the Royal Philharmonic will be conducting the orchestra.