The Planets: Elgar & Holst

After a busy international season, principal conductor Gemma New is at home on the podium with the NZSO and it was a pleasure to see her expressive, expansive style again.

We know a lot about what the universe looks like, but the resonances of space have to be enormously augmented by technology before we can hear a sound wave in a vacuum. Music often settles in this absence of sound and Kaija Saariaho’s Asteroid 4170: Toutatis is unquestionably what my contemporary experience tells me space sounds like. Wonderful orchestration of slow and eerie sounds of strings and harps punctuated with blasts of brass and percussion left us in no doubt there is a lot to listen to in that vacuum.

Christian Tetzlaff tackled Elgar’s Violin Concerto in B Minor with absolute mastery. His rich, confident, emotional tone contrasted with technical excellence where the combination of speed, double stopping, and huge shifts with the bow didn’t faze him at all. After Toutatis, this was musically more Earth bound but also sky high.

Gustav Holst’s The Planets is epic, evocative, and vivid. New’s sense of drama is well suited to bringing these astrological characters to life. The quality of the interpretation between conductor and orchestra was absolutely on point. Holst’s composition, rhythm, and orchestration is of course critical and brings the characters to the stage – Mars, the Bringer of War; Saturn, the Bringer of Old Age; Neptune, the Mystic and so on – but the conductor and musicians must make them real. Musical excellence gave each of the planets their individual nature, the section principals were brilliant as usual, and the tone and volume of the Voices New Zealand Chamber Choir were flawless. There was also something extra going on in this performance. New somehow linked the heartbeats of the planetary cousins to create connection and an awe-inspiring sense of the whole universe.