New NZSO Music Director opens season with mighty Mahler 3

New NZSO Music Director opens season with mighty Mahler 3

Maestro Edo de Waart begins his journey as the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra’s Music Director with one of the symphonic repertoire’s greatest works - Mahler’s colossal Symphony No. 3 in B minor.

This is the first of a series of ‘Masterworks’ that the NZSO will perform under the esteemed Dutch conductor’s baton this year.

I’d like to begin our journey together by presenting the masterpieces I revisit time and again for the good of the soul. That is the music of Mahler, Beethoven and Brahms. These symphonies and concerti are core repertoire for a reason: they flawlessly distil in music how it feels to be alive. Edo de Waart.

Grand in scale and the longest of all the Mahler symphonies, Mahler’s impressive Symphony No. 3 comprises 104 orchestral musicians, an adult female choir, a children’s choir and Swedish mezzo soprano Charlotte Hallekant who is well known for her strong stage presence and vocal expressiveness. In Auckland, members of the Auckland Choral and Auckland Boys Choir join forces for the performance, with the Wellington concert featuring the NZSO Chorale and Wellington Young Voices.

Once described by Mahler as a “gigantic musical poem”, Mahler’s Symphony No. 3 offers one of the most complete musical statements of the Austrian composer’s world view. Each movement represents an element in the universe - plants, animals, people, angels - culminating in a “tranquil, deeply felt” finale, the celebration of divine love and culmination of the entire work’s giant structure. It was Mahler who said: “A symphony must be like the world. It must contain everything.”

Like a book you read repeatedly or a painting you return to at a gallery, there is something about experiencing a symphony which refreshes your soul. It recalibrates you. A masterwork never loses its colour; each time you hear it, you hear it anew.

Edo de Waart.

A specialist in Mahler’s works, Edo de Waart has an international reputation for evoking the spirit of Mahler in some of the most authentic and satisfying performances of his works. At the age of 23, he won the Dimitri Mitropoulos Conducting Competition which resulted in his appointment as Assistant Conductor at the New York Philharmonic with pre-eminent Mahler champion Leonard Bernstein. Almost two years after de Waart’s last visit to the NZSO, when he led the Orchestra through Mahler’s “terrifying and paralysing” Ninth Symphony, this performance of Mahler’s Third, in association with Crowne Plaza Auckland, will be one to treasure.

De Waart has a wonderfully compact conducting technique, but one that communicates every possible nuance and the players responded in kind.
John Button, Dominion Post, Mahler 9, 2014.

…there were many blistering eruptions, for which De Waart drew on the sinew and Rolls-Royce precision of the NZSO players.
William Dart, NZ Herald, Mahler 9, 2014.

Mr. de Waart aptly illustrated the intricacies of the alluring score… he conducted a glowing rendition, highlighting the colorful score’s dramatic cadences and painterly vistas.
The New York Times, 2010.

Edo de Waart
Edo de Waart is currently Chief Conductor of the Royal Flemish Philharmonic, Music Director of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, and Conductor Laureate of the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra. He has previously been Music Director of the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, Sydney Symphony and Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra. He was also Chief Conductor of De Nederlandse Opera.

More about Maestro Edo de Waart >

ENDS

© Scoop Media