This concert is part of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra's 75th anniversary celebrations with 75 concerts performed across the country in 2022.
Guest conductor Alexander Shelley lead the orchestra in performances of Gillian Whitehead's retrieving the fragility of peace, composed especially for this programme; and Brahms’ magnificent Symphony No 1, his two-decade struggle to follow in Beethoven's mighty footsteps. And New Zealand pianist Stephen de Pledge performs Mozart 's sublime but stormy masterpiece, Piano Concerto No 20 in D minor.
The NZSO with pianist Stephen De Pledge and guest conductor Alexander Shelley rehearsing Mozart's Piano Concerto No 20 ahead of their 2022 Legacy concert. Photo: Latitude Creative
Gillian Whitehead: retrieving the fragility of peace
Dame Gillian Whitehead 2019 Photo: © 2019 National Library Imaging Services, Department of Internal Affairs
New Zealand composer Gillian Whitehead drew on a range of musical inspiration for this work. She shaped the piece abstractly, working with what she calls “the play and balance of rhythm, pitches, texture and colour.”
Gillian says: “Music is shaped by the time when and sometimes the place where it’s written. Events of the last few years have probably impacted more strongly on our lives than we know - earthquakes, climate change, war, and many good things as well, of course - and this is probably a watershed moment in our history, which we won’t begin to understand for another 30 years.
"I believe music can somehow express things beyond the play of notes and rhythms, but they are things that can only be expressed only in music, not in words. And peace is fragile, very fragile…”
Mozart: Piano Concerto No 20 in D minor
Pianist Stephen de Pledge Photo: Kelley Eady-Loveridge
This concerto is in a minor key, rare for Classical-era music, but D minor seems to have been a significant key for Mozart. As well as this piano concerto, it’s also the key he chose for his Requiem, Don Giovanni’s descent to hell; and the wrathful Queen of the Night’s aria in The Magic Flute, where she sings about Hell’s vengeance boiling in her heart.
D Minor, in Mozart’s hands is put to good dramatic use. And in this Piano Concerto No 20 the stormy unsettled nature of the music is clear from the very beginning with agitated and swirling strings....
It's performed here by New Zealand pianist Stephen De Pledge.
Schumann: Traumerei (encore)
Brahms: Symphony No 1
Brahms c. 1872 Photo: Public Domain
In 1854, 21-year-old Johannes Brahms heard Beethoven's Ninth Symphony for the first time and resolved to write a symphony of his own. It took him over 20 years to complete his Symphony No 1. “You have no idea how it feels”, he said “to hear behind you the tramp of a giant like Beethoven.”
Certainly, Brahms felt the weight of Beethoven’s achievement as well as the pressure of expectation from the music world waiting for him to prove himself. Brahms was barely out of his teens when he was touted as the next Beethoven even though he’d never written anything for orchestra.
At this time, he was better known as a piano accompanist and had only written a few chamber music pieces and works for piano so you can imagine how much he must have agonised over his first symphony.
But he took time to accumulate the right experience and build his confidence. A position as conductor of an orchestra gave him an intimate appreciation of how to write for this complex musical machine.
When Brahms’ first symphony finally premiered in 1876, critic Eduard Hanslick declared it “one of the most distinctive and magnificent works in the symphonic literature,” and the famous conductor Hans von Bülow dubbed it “Beethoven’s Tenth.”
So, perhaps it’s true that good things come to those who wait!
Producer / Engineer: Darryl Stack
Music Alive producer: Ryan Smith
Recorded at the Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington
