Compelling programming, three superb soloists, a committed orchestra, and a dedicated conductor made this an outstanding concert.
Myth and Ritual was the title of Saturday night’s Orchestra Wellington concert, but it could equally have been Sense and Sensuality: vivid music played with intelligence and verve….
…it was matched so well by the musical colours Taddei shaped, everything contoured with a grim and grimy edge.
An extraordinary tour de force of composition, the Dance brought forth from Marc Taddei and his players a brilliant response in both corporate orchestral and individual soloistic terms. From the frenetic opening, through the most languid sequences and right up to the final whiplash chords, the playing caught every mood, superbly voicing the chameleon-like progressions with that unique combination of sensuousness and “edge” to themes, rhythms and textures.
What particularly held my attention was the spaciousness of the phrasings in the early stages of the dance by both solo players and sections, Taddei and his musicians enabling the music’s essential bitter-sweet character to emerge, setting the strings’ almost decadent voluptuousness against the winds’ piquant flavourings, the latter pungently activating the dancer’s growing excitement and urgencies, leading to the unbridled excitement of the concluding section’s abandoned flourishes, the knife-edge wind arabesques, and the cataclysmic whiplash chords at the end – stunning!
Marc Taddei, music director of Orchestra Wellington (OW), has made the band a major fixture of Wellington’s music scene. A heartily large number of subscribers means there is always a capacity audience in place and the Michael Fowler Centre is no small venue.
The opening movement, with its strange, unnerving pauses, had both suspense and moments of soaring delight under conductor Marc Taddei’s watchful eye.