Love Letters of musical wonders

Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra launched its Bayleys Great Classics series with a Teutonic triumvirate of Wagner, Schumann and Mendelssohn.

Auckland last heard Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll just three months ago but there’s no denying it’s the perfect prelude, expressing a composer’s joy at the birth of his son.

Conductor Giordano Bellincampi coaxed gentle elation from his players, building anticipation before a thrilling apogee.

Veronika Eberle made her debut with the APO in 2008 when, aged 19, she tackled the Beethoven violin concerto. For this performance, Eberle’s talents were lavished on a lesser work, Schumann’s 1853 violin concerto, one of his last compositions before his attempted suicide and incarceration.

Austrian violinist Isabelle Faust once described its first movement to me as a masterpiece in its blend of Don Giovanni and the baroque.

Here, it seemed stolid with too many stentorian blasts of full orchestral tutti, the only emotional engagement coming when soloist and orchestra shared its gentler second theme.

An even more stolid finale revealed some strain impacting on the valiant soloist.

In between, the slow movement was much superior with its lingering premonitions of Mahlerian twilight.

After interval came the joie de vivre of Mendelssohn’s Italian Symphony. Bellincampi delivered it with a compelling earthiness, from the rustic woodwind interpolations of its opening Allegro vivace to the exhilaration of its closing runaway Saltarello.