It will certainly be interesting to see how the combination of Schoenberg and Schumann succeeds here. Although it might seem as if the NZSO is moving somewhat out of the repertoire comfort zone with the one-and-a-half doses of Schoenberg, this is somewhat misleading. Verklaerte Nacht is a solid, if unchallenging work that lies pretty firmly in the late Romantic tradition that should fit pretty snugly alongside the Schumann. I haven’t heard the Brahms in this orchestral version, but it is a finely crafted piece and Schoenberg a great orchestrator. Inkinen conducts.

8. Ross Harris: Vienna (Mahler); Haydn: Cello Concerto No. 1; Mahler: Symphony No. 5

If Li Wei can breather any life into the Haydn Cello Concerto I shall be impressed, because it really is a thoroughly uninteresting work. Vienna (Mahler) is part of a commission from the NZSO, Three Pieces for Orchestra. I have to wonder where the other pieces are – it’s pretty poor of the orchestra not to play the entire work. Harris doesn’t deserve to be treated as an accessory to a dead composer, particularly as performing something like this, presumably intended as a tribute, hardly gives a fair impression of his work. Inkinen conducts.

9. Copland: Appalachian Spring Suite; Jennifer Higdon: Percussion Concerto; Lyell Cresswell: Landscapes of the Dead; Beethoven: Symphony No. 6 ‘”Pastoral”

Jennifer Higdon provides the first international contemporary music of 2010. What little music of hers I have heard is very impressive – not exactly avant garde, but certainly striking. Lyell Cresswell is an expat who has spent most of his career in Scotland; I’ve only ever heard one of his works – a trumpet concertino played by the NZSO – and that was hardly inspiring, but one never knows! Appalachian Spring Suite is Copland’s populist side. Some people seem to love it, but the only real highlight is the joyous rendition of Simple Gifts. And the “Pastoral” Symphony? Don’t talk to me about the ”Pastoral” Symphony. Alexander Shelley conducts.

10. Britten: Four Sea Interludes (from Peter Grimes); James MacMillan: Veni, Veni, Emmanuel; Ravel: Pavane for a dead princess; Strauss: Death and Transfiguration

This is probably the most complete concert of the lot, with just the one chestnut thrown in to pretend that a theme exists. The Strauss may be a little hard to swallow, but the MacMillan and Britten more than make up for this. MacMillan is probably the best known young postmodern composer around, and although I can sense a reduced audience, it should at least be an appreciative one. Alexander Shelley conducts.

11. Telemann: Burlesque de Don Quixotte; Sallinen: Some Aspects of Peltoniemi Hintrik’s Funeral March; Grieg: Two Norwegian Melodies; Arthur Foote: A Night Piece; Sibelius: Impromptu; Mendelssohn: String Symphony No. 10

This concert concerts mostly of music for string orchestra – and yet it manages to be wildly more interesting than most of the other concerts on offer. Telemann is a great, underplayed composer, although I feel that writing for strings alone does diminish the scope for his brilliant early use of instrumental colour. Sallinen is an amazing contemporary composer; Arthur Foote is completely unknown to me. The Mendelssohn manages to be simultaneously insipid and dazzling; it would certainly be no loss were the entirety of Mozart’s work to be lost in a rather bizarre fire and replaced in the repertoire by Mendelssohn’s. Vessa Matti Lepannen directs.

12. Christmas music.

Alright, it includes both Britten and Rutter, but still. You must be joking. This absolutely cannot be happening.

Paul Goodwin conducts.

Additional Concerts

At the Festival of the Arts the NZSO is adding a concert of Wagner sung by Simon O’Neill to the Mahler 8 concert already announced. This seems to be the extent of their involvement next year. Still, Wellingtonians can consider themselves lucky, because in Auckland a concert of waltzes will be performed. A concert of Rodgers and Hammerstein will be performed, for which the management had better have a really good excuse.

It seems like the year’s shining light will be the Made in New Zealand concert (as usual), which will feature two works by Ross Harris, including a Violin Concerto, along with a work by John Psathas (I get the impression that this isn’t his new marimba concerto, but that will be brilliant when it happens), something by Claire Cowan and a comparatively ancient work by Arnold Trowell from the early twentieth century.

If this concert proved nothing else it was that the time has come to stop giving Douglas Lilburn such mystique as the first “great” New Zealand composer. Landfall in Unknown Seas is supposed to be one of the quintessential works of Kiwi classical composition, but all things considered, it’s nothing more than twenty minutes of trite, pastoral waffle that might just have passed muster in 1820’s Devon. In the hands of almost any other composer, the story of Abel Tasman’s voyage of discovery would have received a dramatic interpretation by full orchestra, but in Lilburn’s “setting”  – he takes the easy way out by having the poem read between movements – this is reduced to a perpetual tutti by string orchestra. There is nothing to suggest that the programme is anything more than a casual stroll down an English country lane, and while shimmering tremolos worked fine in the Bartered Bride overture in 1866, Smetana at least had the sense to put some rhythmic thrust in there to balance it out. Alas, not even Allen Curnow’s poetry could save this work, particularly given that Bill Manhire read it so quickly as to be nigh incomprehensible.

Lissa Meridan’s new work, a quiet fury, was much more successful. Her fixed media seemed to rush on ahead of the orchestral material, bringing forward momentum to the music and making sense of otherwise quite abstract and disconnected material. Electronic cues, such as a rush of “wind”, led to complementary orchestral motifs (the “wind” might be accompanied by the chattering of col legno strings, with which they blended to create a unified sound. Meridan makes a connection in the music between abstraction and violence, with the least discernable noises linking to the most frenetic orchestral packages. Certainly the experience was many steps above anything that Lilburn ever produced – or could have produced.

Unfortunately, the Lilburn was not yet over, although Three Poems of the Sea proved itself to be a superior work to Landfall. Poems uses a full orchestra, of which the narrator is essentially a part, reading over the music rather than after it. Despite the distractions around him, Manhire read these poems much more clearly, incorporating a pseudo-melody that recalled other settings of the poems. The music itself is not markedly more complex than Landfall, but it has an edge to it that the earlier piece lacks, and Lilburn even allows himself the luxury of a little counterpoint, rendering the programmatic element of the piece at least plausible.

Jack Body’’s My Name is Mok Bhon added another medium to the three already explored in the concert, incorporating visual imagery alongside orchestra, fixed media and narrator (although the narrator in Mok Bhon is part of the fixed media). Like much of Body’s music, Mok Bhon incorporates gamelan, here as part of both the fixed media and the orchestra, with melody lines drifting between the two, but unlike works liike Campur Sari, the gamelan is not the entirety of the piece. Body’s use of the gamelan here is to fully integrate it with the percussion section, rather than write a work for orchestra and gamelan. Thus the performers were not specialist gamelan players, but members of the orchestra (notably Bruce McKinnon). Most of the orchestral music itself clearly originates from the Western rather than Eastern tradition, adding a resonant depth to the Indonesian melodies, and a striking poignancy to the projected images.

Aaaaaand I’ll just leave this here, because this is really quite tardy now. Dugal’s piece was great. The two purely electroacoustic works to follow not so great.