Orchestra Responds Well To Conductor

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31344, 14 April 1967, Page 14

Orchestra Responds Well To Conductor

Alceo Galliera again conducted the N.Z.B.C. Orchestra before a very large audience in the Civic Theatre last evening. The programme began with Mozart’s overture to Don Giovanni, played with excellent precision and dynamic tonal textures. It was a dean performance, extitingly accented, and dearly phrased so as to create the desired atmosphere. Ladislav Jasek was the soloist in Dvorak’s Violin Concerto in A minor. His training in Prague will have fitted him well to give a thoroughly discerning interpretation of this work by his illustrious fellowcountryman, as it has given him a secure and brilliant technique. He has a singing that soars freely with a lively vibrancy, and is warm and brightly sounding. The first movement, dramatic, not unacquainted with the heart’s foreboding, and possessed of tenderness as well was played by both the soloist an<j orchestra in sympathetic unanimity of approach to the spirit of the music and this accord passed on into the beautiful second movement, bringing forth richly romantic sounds. The last movement had a rustic jollity expressed in country-dance rhythms and harmonic liveliness. This was happy music, offering friendly welcome, and it sped along with a carefree jollity for most of its course. Mr Jasek’s tone commanded wide admiration at all times, and his strong phrasing made his ideas perfectly clear to the audience, who enthusiastically showed undoubted approval at the end of the work. It was the first time the orchestra has played this concerto, and it did so with confidence, competence, and good realisation of all the romantic and colourful possibilities. Mahler’s Symphony No. 1

in D began with a thin misty veil of sound as a background to horn calls and cuckoo cries. A gently moving section carried us along pleasant ly until brighter sunshine broke through. AU • was pleasantly merry and innocuous for quite a while until some challenging dissonances introduced a section of wilder abandon with which the movement closed. In the second movement there was some bucolic roistering of folk-dancing type. A horn call heralded a change to waltz style which gave contrast until the return of the original theme which increased wildly in excitement until it ran headlong into the double bar at the end. The third movement is intriguing in its humorous contrasts. Much of it suggests a funeral march set to the tune of “Frire Jacques” who was, in the song, asked if he were sleeping. He had better be here or a horrid trick would be played on him. However, all might have been well, for the mourners and the funeral band could not entirely keep their minds on the job in hand and were continually wandering off on happier pursuits. The last movement began with demoniac yells and much tension from everyone in the large orchestra. This gave way to some lush romanticism. A quietly muttering foreboding led back to the noise and excited intensity of the opening. Quiet meditation followed and the cuckoo from the beginning of the symphony turned up again. The movement ended with a procession’s pageantry. Mr Galliera conducted from memory and got magnificent response from the players in a splendid performance. A furore of applause was given to what was certainly a tour de force. —C.F.B.