Auckland Youth Symphony Orchestra at Forum North

Auckland Youth Symphony Orchestra

Antun Poljanich (musical director)

Natalie Harris (clarinet)

Programme:

Elgar – Serenade for Strings

Weber – Clarinet Concerto No. 2

Beethoven – Symphony No. 4

Note: due to unforeseen circumstances, changes have been made to the previously advertised programme.

In mid-August the Auckland Youth Symphony Orchestra returned, flushed with success, from its first foray onto European soil. The tour’s climax was the AYSO’s debut at Berlin’s illustrious Young Euro Classic Festival. Berlin critics are not exactly famous for their generosity, so when they use words like “exquisite”, they must be talking about something really special.

That “something special” is the cream of NZ’s young adult musicians, moulded by the masterly hand of Antun Poljanich into a truly top-notch orchestra. Of course, those who have heard the AYSO play in Whangarei already know that. If you haven’t, here’s another chance!

This programme is yet another to set musical nerves a-tingling. Endowed with characteristic charm, Elgar’s Serenade for Strings (1892) is both simple and undemanding – as befits any serenade worth its salt. Weber’s scintillating Second Clarinet Concerto exemplifies his talent, shared with his “cousin-in-law”, a certain Herr W. A. Mozart, for exploiting the acrobatic potential of the woodwind family’s “new baby”.

Many regard Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony – written after the Eroica, during the tumultuous years when he was rebuilding his life in defiance of cruel Fate – as a curiosity, a retrospective relaxation, overshadowed by its ground-breaking contemporaries. It isn’t, not quite. Firstly, he adopted the classical model, not to “look back”, but because it was a commission that he needed to crack on with. Secondly, behind the surface jollity, serenity and dancing lurks the Eroica’s new-found ferocity, threatening, and occasionally rupturing the smiling surface, an internal struggle culminating in a stunningly effective dramatic dismissal.