De Waart authority shines through
Music by Mendelssohn, Elgar and Strauss, New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, Conducted by Edo De Waart, with Michelle DeYoung (mezzo soprano), Michael Fowler Centre, March 25
I suppose the idea of programming three works that all illustrate nature in some form or other was a good one, and, in many respects it worked.
Mendelssohn’s Hebrides Overture Fingal’s Cave isa splendid piece that builds in tension in exhilarating fashion, here conducted and played in superb fashion – never overinflated, but fleet and fiery.
Elgar’s Sea Pictures – composed at the insistence of the composer’s wife – are a pretty but slight set, made famous by the incomparable Janet Baker. And that is the problem for any other singer.
As I have heard on record, Michelle DeYoung is a fine mezzo, but her rather insistent vibrato and a certain lack of real weight at the bottom of the voice worked against her here. As a result, it was Elgar’s beautiful orchestrations that caught the ear under De Waart’s knowing baton.
We last heard Richard Strauss’ vast Alpine Symphony nearly five years ago, under the baton of American conductor David Zinman, and it was brilliantly done. But I suspect that this performance was even better. Edo De Waart is a superb Straussian and he marshalled his huge orchestra with a quiet authority that found a measure of poetry that few conductors discover, without ever skimping on the drama.
And the playing was superb. Having played the work the night before in Auckland, one could have forgiven the players had they displayed a hint of fatigue, but there was never a suggestion of any loss of tension; from the moment the climber begins his ascent to the moment he finally descends, his journey is illustrated with a marvellous, almost cinematic, sense of theatre.
There was a wonderful sense of drama at the summit and the storm was properly wild.
But for all the brilliant orchestral effects, the musical content is often found lacking – but not here, where the measure of De Waart’s achievement was just how unexpectedly ‘‘musical’’ so much of it sounded. – John Button