NZSO Season 2010 – Part One
I’m actually quite flabbergasted by the dullness of the NZSO’s subscription programme for next year. There is very little New Zealand music on display – and less that I really want to hear. Of course, if you’re the kind of person looking out exclusively for repertoire symphonies, then you’re in luck,, but there’s precious little contemporary music on display, and it’s hardly flatteringly programmed. Many of the ‘stars’ who would previously have played/conducted two concerts are next year only doing one.
1. Smetana: Sharka; Sibelius: Violin Concerto; Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 6 “Pathetique”.
Why would anybody bother to show up? Really? The NZSO plays the -brilliant- Sibelius concerto nearly every year; the Tchaikovsky is stupefyingly dull. The purpose of this concert is to show off the ‘glamourous’ Hillary Hahn, who will doubtless get some kind of turgid writeup beforehand in the Dominion Post. Tellingly, the programme doesn’t even mention the Ma Vlast excerpt, the only creative moment in this programme – and in terms of programming Smetana, ‘creative’ means ‘not Die Moldau’. Inkinen conducts.
2. Strauss: Metamorphosen; Bruckner: Symphony No. 7.
Alright, I’ll admit it. I would dearly love to go and see the Strauss, but there’s a problem. There is no doubt whatsoever in my mind that Bruckner is far and away the worst symphonic composer to be spat into this world, and Symphony No. 7 just loses out to No. 4 in being the most terrifyingly bad symphony ever written. Inkinen conducts.
3. Ritchie: French Overture; Gounod: “Ah, Je ris de me voir”; Bellini: “Costa Diva”; Puccini: “Un bel di vedremo”, “Vissi d’arte”, “O mio babbino caro”; Elgar: Symphony No. 1.
Yes. That’s right. An Elgar symphony alongside a bunch of populist ‘high’ opera. I’m sure that Malvina Major will sing perfectly finely, even with such familiar material to work with, but I’m just not sure what exactly there is that’s really worth hearing. Tecwyn Evans conducts.
4. Mozart: Symphony No. 41; Strauss: Overture from Die Fledermaus; Lehar: “Meine Lippen, sie kuessen so heiss”, “Liebe, du Himmel auf Erden”, “Vilja”; Dvorak: Czech Suite Finale; Rusalka: Song to the Moon; Strauss: Thunder and Lightning Polka.
While the first of these Malvina Major concerts is designed to show her off as a dramatic soprano, this takes the other tack, delving through the murky legacy of singspiel to produce a concert that Hitler would really have loved. There is precious little music in this concert of any originality, although I would be somewhat curious to hear the Rusalka in any other context. Tecwyn Evans conducts.
5. Glinka: Overture from Ruslan and Ludmilla; Rachmaninov: Piano Concerto No. 3; Glazunov: The Seasons.
The first subscription concert I’d seriously consider paying to hear features an all-Russian line-up thankfully missing Tchaikovsky. Well, not really, because Glazunov was Tchaikovsky in a frock, but the Rachmaninov, played by Freddy Kempf, might just make up for it. Oh, and Alexander Lazarev, who last time I saw him was nigh on falling off the podium in excitement.
6. Dvorak: The Noon Witch; Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1; Prokofiev Symphony No. 7.
Ahhhh… Prokofiev, and some unfamiliar Dvorak. This will be a good concert, despite the Tchaikovsky, and would be pretty much perfect for Lazarev with some Shostakovich in there also. Alas,, ’tis not to be.