Soprano lifts an uneven concert
New Zealand Symphony Orchestra’s Heavenly, conducted by Miguel Harth-Bedoya, with Madeleine Pierard (soprano)
Michael Fowler Centre, November 10
Asparse audience was in attendance on Thursday night to hear a concert that featured wonderful moments but never quite reached the celestial heights promised.
First up was Tumblebird Contrails, a deliberately whimsically titled work by young American composer Gabriella Smith. Informed by Smith’s recording of wildlife sounds, and by her deep concerns about environmental destruction, it was a classically vigorous and evocative piece of tone painting.
The opening tone-world of aerial sounds and birds in flight soon gave way to darker, more distorted passages in which the woodwinds might have been playing underwater. It was also a cleverly balanced work, in which long, desolate lines in the brass and woodwinds offset the frenetic, twittering activity of the strings underneath.
A lonely note of loss could be heard throughout, reflecting Smith’s fear of environmental collapse.
But while this was an exciting piece, and very well-executed, its resonance with – or connection to – the concert’s centrepiece, Mahler’s Symphony No. 4, was less obvious. It was also a musical choice that left soprano Madeleine Pierard, called in to perform the symphony’s final-act song, somewhat underused.
That aside, it’s always a pleasure to hear Mahler’s Fourth, even in a puzzlingly uneven performance, as it was on Thursday night. Guest conductor Miguel Harth-Bedoya took a brisk approach to the work, and in places that paid off.
The first movement in particular was sharply articulated, certain passages and motifs standing out with a startling, almost threedimensional clarity. Throughout, the lower strings sounded staggeringly good – warm, stirring and rich.
But right from the outset things felt a fraction rushed, and something about Harth-Bedoya’s approach left the more exposed moments sounding ragged and rough around the edges, while the fortissimo passages were muddled.
The orchestra’s playing was, unsurprisingly, far better when it was given time to relax and breathe a little, as in the second movement, which had dreamy, trembling moments of perfection. In the third movement, some of the playing – especially the conjoined passages for oboe and cor anglais – was meltingly beautiful, and the end was sweetness itself.
Harth-Bedoya was unable to get the different sections playing cohesively, though, and there was that mild restlessness in the auditorium that denotes a not-fullyengaged audience. Fortunately Pierard was in fine voice for the final act song, The Heavenly Life, her singing rounded, supple and even across its range. More of that, please.