Soloist: Ben Morrison (violin); Conductor: Ken Young

This New Zealand School of Music concert at St Andrews on the Terrace opened with a piece by NZSM graduate student Simon Dickson, written for the Jenny McLeod Composition Award (or something along those lines). With this work, Dickson aimed to capture two of his compositional styles – that with which he wrote earlier in his studies at the NZSM, and that with which he writes today. Although conceptually interesting, this does rather run the risk of disguising the composer’s talents, by forcing him to write using an abandoned – and presumably, to the composer’s mind, inferior – style, to say nothing of the difficulties in marrying the two styles.

As it happened, Dickson did largely succeed in creating a largely unified work. While the structural joints were audible, the atmospheres of the sections were quite similar. The functional atonality of the opening and closing sections was vaguely disquieting but unchallenging, perhaps because there were few individual lines to follow. Here and there were some deft touches, particularly with what was probably intended to be the piece’s climax, where after an initial violent surge the orchestral bass dropped out, leaving exposed notes hanging in the air, as well as Dickson’s reveal toward the end of some of thhe inner workings of the piece, putting the pedal instruments on display. Unfortunately, as usual with such young composers’ orchestral awards, the work really could have done with a much larger span of time to justify the structural decisions made. maybe someday music administrators will work out that student composers’ work is more important than the repertoire works on the programme. Obviously, this wasn’t Shostakovich 1 – but if it had been, nobody would have known.

Ben Morrison, concert-master of the NZSO NYO, is an extremely accomplished violinist, and the Tchaikovsky concerto is certainly one of the most important Romantic violin concertos, so it was no surprise that this performance was, overall, a success. The NZSM orchestra’s playing felt a little stodgy in the opening, but rapidly improved, as they traversed the tutti sections with admirable energy. Morrison’s playing was refined and strong throughout, and there was a remarkable sense of cohesion between orchestra and soloist, during the first movement’s oscillations in and out of quasi-cadenza passages. The chief fault of the work itself lies in these sections, which give the first movement a sense of completion on its own merits, which disrupts the balance of the work as a whole, but this was handled convincingly enough.

The Vaughan Williams, which was on the whole played spectacularly well, is a curious artefact. It seems perverse that such a work, blatantly a ‘war symphony’ of the most brutal variety, could get a free pass from the same English critics who savaged the war symphonies of Shostakovich – and how foolish they look now, with the vast depths of expression and meaning of those works exposed alongside their blatant musical genius! Vaughan Williams’ Sixth is a splendidly constructed work – if only in its central movements. The first movement strives toward violence and spontaneity, but really only succeeds in incoherence, with the relationships between the varied ideas never being satisfyingly explored. While the movement has energy in spades, much of it is wasted.

The next movements share the same violent approach as the first, but are much more directed. The second movement is particularly notable for its climax, in which, after brutally working its way to a sustained level of raw power, there is a sudden drop in dynamic that leaves energy humming through the air. The final movement is in complete contrast to the rest of the work, especially the first movement. It uses a single, gentle theme throughout, at an unflinchingly soft dynamic, obviously – though Mr. Vaughan Williams apparently enjoyed denying this – intending to cause audiences to reflect upon the destructiveness of war. Unfortunately, the soft dynamic leaves very little space for actual expression – or at least this was how the orchestra performed it – so it served largely to leave phrases unshaped.