‘Testimony’ pitch-perfect piece of musicianship
St Matthew's Collegiate School for Girls
New Zealand Symphony Orchestra directed by Vesa-Matti Leppänen with Ken Ichinose (cello). Music by Lilburn, Bruckner, Rautavaara, Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich. Michael Fowler Centre, April 12.
The title of Friday night’s concert “Testimony”, featuring the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra strings, referenced the “memoir” that Dmitri Shostakovich supposedly dictated near the end of his life. (Disputes about its authenticity continue.)
However, the opening work, though composed during Shostakovich’s era, came from a completely different sound-world. Douglas Lilburn’s 1947 piece Diversions for String Orchestra was wonderfully played, as the musicians, under the direction of NZSO concertmaster Vesa-Matti Leppänen, conjured up the bright, sharp and effervescent contours of the New Zealand composer’s sonic landscapes. Ranging between glittering agitation and stuttering warmth, the playing was suffused with that sense of quiet and undemonstrative hope that characterises so much of Lilburn’s output.
If one were sketching out the concert like a sonata, it would have been in something resembling A-B-A-B-A form, the sharper, more modernist pieces alternating with romantic lyricism. The Lilburn was, accordingly, followed by the Adagio from Bruckner’s String Quintet, in a beautifully realised version that emphasised the work’s nobility, restraint and sense of enduring peace.
After the interval we were returned to the 20th century by Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara’s work Pelimannit. A folksong-inspired, kaleidoscopic piece of tone-painting, it conjured images of fiddlers, devils and much else besides. The inner movements – including a delightful Bach facsimile and some enjoyably jagged passages – were especially pleasing.
Then it was back to the 19th century with Tchaikovsky’s Andante Cantabile. Here, the strings’ hushed and understated playing, buttressing the beautiful solo lines of Ken Ichinose’s cello, was heard to better and better effect as the piece progressed.
But nothing quite compared to the ultimate arrival of Shostakovich himself, in the form of his Chamber Symphony, originally written as a string quartet before being arranged by Rudolf Barshai. Merging war memorial with personal memoir, it was played with an infinitely delicate touch. Leppänen and his colleagues summoned an exquisite array of textures and emotions, from burgeoning menace through to a world-weary sadness that seemed to carry all the world’s cares.
The whirling, anguished and unsettling core of the inner movements, so suggestive of external and internal torment, was given its full weight without ever being exaggerated or over-heavy. There were moments of reverential beauty and, ultimately, an elegiac final movement with a distinct “in memoriam” feel. The work ended on a questioning but quietly defiant note, a pitch-perfect piece of musicianship to cap a cleverly balanced and creative programme.