Review: Plenty Pathetique

Sunday, 21 May 2017, 8:31 pm
Article: Max Rashbrooke

Review: Plenty Pathetique

Pathetique
New Zealand Symphony Orchestra
Saturday, May 20
Reviewer: Max Rashbrooke

Saturday night's concert kicked off with Embiosis, a delightful short piece by a talented young New Zealand composer, David Grahame Taylor. Right from its shimmering opening it managed to be both edgy, hovering on the edge of different tonalities, and lush, with deep, warm sounds from the strings. It was a fitting overture to two of the classics of the Romantic repertoire, and it'll be fascinating to see what Taylor can write at a larger scale.

The first of the classics was the Dvorak cello concerto, with young Armenian Narek Hakhnazaryan as the soloist. After a slightly hesitant opening from both soloist and orchestra, this blossomed into a fine performance. Hakhnazaryan and conductor Darrell Ang took a toned-down approach, sunnier and less tormented than, say, that of a Jacqueline du Pre recording, and while Hakhnazaryan doesn't have a huge presence he is clearly a very sensitive musician. His understanding with the orchestra was so strong that at times it seemed as if he and flautist Bridget Douglas, in particular, were connected by an invisible thread, and his playing in the quieter moments was meltingly soft. A moving Armenian folk song for his encore completed the picture.

After the interval came Tchaikovsky's emotion-packed Pathetique Symphony. Ang handled the immense first movement deftly, with clarity and balance; even moments that often pass by unnoticed – an entry for the violas, say – had real beauty. But I would have liked slightly more variety in the texture – the later iterations of the main theme, for instance, lacked the silvery tone they're often given – and that was true in the two middle movements as well. The uneasy waltz of the second movement, for example, was certainly uneasy but lacked the counterbalancing grace of the waltz. Fortunately the last movement was more like the first, sensitively played and delicate, a fitting end to a very enjoyable concert.

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Max Rashbrooke

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Max Rashbrooke is a journalist and author working in Wellington, New Zealand, where he writes about politics, finance and social issues.

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