Poise and power noted
National Youth Orchestra Summer Concert, Isaac Theatre Royal, February 2
The challenging selection process lay behind them, the long hours of practice had ended and the audience was taking its seats in the Isaac Theatre Royal. This was the 2018 New Zealand Symphony Orchestra National Youth Orchestra’s (NYO) moment of truth when all the threads came together for the class of 2018.
You’d have excused some feelings of nervousness, but it showed none as they launched into a programme of Beethoven, Elgar and Dvorak with poise and power.
The concert was dominated by an engaging personality and enthusiasm. Conducted by Australian Guy Noble, the programme, ranging from Beethoven’s Leonore Overture No.3 to Dvorak’s melodic but musically freewheeling Eighth Symphony, was stamped with youthful insouciance.
Even that old warhorse of the Leonore Overture became distinctly frisky, while the orchestra’s performance of the Dvorak’s Eighth Symphony injected the work’s melodic richness and sudden mood changes with character and affection. Together they didn’t simply ‘‘play’’ the work in the detached, ever-so-slightly-bored manner orchestral musicians sometimes display. These young people were obviously savouring each note and passage.
The concert’s highlight was unquestionably Elgar’s Cello
Concerto, with the 18-year-old New Zealand cellist Matthias Balzat. Elgar’s autumnal elegy to a world lost in the mud and blood of the Western Front challenges soloist and orchestra not to slide into either musical melodrama or bathos. Balzat and the NYO met the challenge head on, balancing musicianship with feeling to provide something deeply satisfying.
Balzat played with highly focused sensitivity, producing glowing textures and an almost luminous intensity. The audience’s response at the final note was one every musician hopes for – a reflective silence followed by loud applause. His response came with a near perfect solo performance of a movement from a Bach cello suite.
There’s only one word to describe the evening. Exhilarating.