REVIEW:
New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Tecwyn Evans with Orpheus Choir, Jenny Wollerman (soprano), Richard Greager (tenor), Paul Whelan (bass-baritone). Music by Adams and Psathas.
Wellington Town Hall, May 10.
This was an ambitious concert, and one that involved large forces to service two works of very different caste from one another.
It was disappointing, then, to see so many empty seats for an evening in which music was able to both entertain and enlighten with a mix of introspective beauty and dazzling, ear-tickling excitement.
John Psathas’ Orpheus in Rarohenga was composed in 2002 to a commission by the Orpheus Choir to celebrate their 50th anniversary and I can find no record that I reviewed it then.
So this was my first time hearing of this large colourful work; a work in which the words of Robert Sullivan interweave the journey of Orpheus to the underworld with the travels, and death, of James Cook in the South Pacific.
The words were not printed in the programme so we had to rely on the diction of the splendid trio of singers and the choir for moment to moment details – not easy.
Still, this is a highly colourful, somewhat sprawling occasional piece that had moments of beauty and moments of almost cinematic excitement.
But it was unfortunate that it followed a work that is one of the undoubted masterpieces of late 20th century music.
John Adams’ Harmonielehre (treatise on harmony) dates from 1985 and what we get here is an astonishing work – a work that glitters with relentless rhythms one minute and glows with a neo romantic yearning the next.
He nods at composers of the past, yet with few identifiable quotations, and mixes reflection with taut excitement that takes the listener to a world completely his own.
Tecwyn Evans directed a performance of tremendous tension and excitement, and the sound in the Town Hall was quite something to experience.
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