Philharmonia orchestra splendidly sets its spirits free
How might one single out the one work on Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra’s Free Spirit programme that inspired the concert’s title?
Conductor Giordano Bellincampi’s virtuoso work with Richard Strauss’ Don Juan certainly fitted the bill.
We were swept away by its opening roar, so rich in sound that, at times, one had to check whether the town hall organ wasn’t in the mix. Gentler emotions bloomed beautifully when Bede Hanley’s oboe gave out the work’s love theme.
Anthony Ritchie’s 1994 Viola Concerto revealed a remarkable freshness of inspiration and benefited from an energised soloist in Robert Ashworth.
Although I have the same reservations that I had decades ago with the populist elements that take over the work’s finale, it was impossible not to surrender to the irrepressible momentum of the New Zealand composer’s opening Allegro tempestuoso.
Buoyed by marimba, this was an inexhaustible spring of bubbling busyness, music that regenerates itself from within, like the best of Bach or Poulenc, allowing Ashworth welcome opportunities to interact with orchestral colleagues.
The slow movement might be alarmingly conservative for some tastes but Ritchie’s sure melodic craft paid dividends as Ashworth unfurled impressive spans of inevitable lyricism. As an encore, the soloist found another free spirit in cellist Louise McKay, to charm us with a bluesy take on Paul Desmond’s Take Five.
Talking free spirits, was there ever a composer more deserving of this description than Antonin Dvorak? After an interval, Dvorak’s life-affirming G major Symphony offered indisputable proof.
Bellincampi revelled in every Bohemian vista, from twittering bird calls to the rustic jubilation of its final pages, imbuing the lilt of its Allegretto grazioso with the sweep of Puccini.