NZSO Timeless Beauty: Baroque sensibility and stylish flair
NZSO ensemble for Timeless Beauty
Photo credit: Phoebe Tuxford/NZSO
NZSO called the first concert tour of its 2025 season ‘Timeless Beauty: Handel & Telemann’. In fact, this programme offers much more than its rather bland title suggests. It is, for me, the most successful Baroque music concert the NZSO has presented in recent years, a splendidly curated programme performed with stylish flair and, though played on mostly modern instruments, a fine Baroque sensibility.
On stage is an all-stars NZSO ensemble, just 26 musicians, directed from the violin with musicianly leadership by Vesa-Matti Leppänen, the NZSO’s concertmaster. Leppänen has led the Orchestra since 2002, and during that time has proven his versatility, showing an affinity for chamber music and the music of the Baroque, alongside the big symphonic works of the orchestra’s usual repertoire.
For this Baroque programme most of the ensemble stands to play, grouped around the harpsichord. Behind, timpanist Larry Reese plays his 18th century instruments with his usual relaxed style. Reese has long taken an interest in traditional performance practices and was key to the NZSO purchase of these period timpani over two decades ago.
The programme opens with a crisp and stylish performance of the ‘Overture’ and ‘Sinfonia’ from Handel’s Occasional Oratorio. Featured in the concert are the NZSO’s fine trio of trumpeters, section principal Michael Kirgan with David Johnson and Mark Carter, and their bright, clear playing with timpani in the Overture contributes to the martial atmosphere of a patriotic work composed during the time of the Jacobite rebellion. French-overture style dotted rhythms are played with light-footed sprightly character by the whole ensemble.
Timpanist Larry Reese
“…playing his 18th century instruments with relaxed style.”
A gorgeous oboe solo from the marvellous Robert Orr, one of the orchestra's musical heroes, opens the Sinfonia, and the exchanges that follow between a small solo (concertino) group and the full (ripieno) ensemble are skilfully managed.
Leppänen, in a genial, relaxed introduction from the stage, admits that he, like many of the audience, hasn’t much acquaintance with the music of the next composer, Matthew Locke. Working much earlier in the period than more familiar Baroque giants like Handel and Bach, the Englishman Locke, court composer for King Charles 11, was a generation older than his more famous compatriot Purcell.
His Suite for ‘The Tempest’ is perhaps the most intriguing programming in the concert. Written for a 1694 revival of Shakespeare’s play, seven short, attractive pieces include bouncy Baroque dances and atmospheric mysterious sections with puzzling harmonies. The instructions on the music, Leppänen tells us, are in “old English”. At one point Locke asks for the dynamics to become "lowder by degrees", what would now be called a crescendo, a rare effect in English Baroque music at the time. The dances have names like ‘Rustick Air’ and ‘Martial Jigge’. I have never heard of a ‘Lilk’, and it seems there is no known definition of this rapid dance.
This Kapiti concert is the first of an eight-centre tour. These orchestral players are perhaps more at home in a bigger ensemble with conductor, and there are occasional moments from the highly-accomplished string players when all is not as sharp and precise as we are used to from dedicated Baroque groups. The performance is nonetheless always engaging, with committed energy and vigour, tempo changes deftly managed, contrapuntal lines clear. In the Locke, a little trio from flutes and bassoon is quite beautifully played, just one of many examples of lovely solo work in the programme.
Handel's Alcina Suite, which opens the second half, was also originally written for stage, in this case Handel's 1735 opera Alcina. Leppänen notes with his usual droll humour that both this work and the Locke were “located on weird islands where weird things happened."
A dozen short, contrasting pieces show off both Handel's dramatic skills and the ensemble's rapid facility, with ornamented lines, graceful dances and sensitive conversational duets. A dark, nightmarish section – ‘Entrée des songes funestes’ - from the opera's 2nd act is full of dramatic instrumental colours. The Suite ends with characterful music from Act 3, ranging from a fleet ‘Sinfonia’, through a dancing ‘Tamburino’ to a fast and fancy ‘Dopo tante amare’, originally for chorus, who sang as the opera ended “every evil turns into good and in the end love triumphs”.
NZSO Concertmaster Vesa-Matti Leppänen
“…directing from the violin with musicianly leadership.”
Photo credit: Phoebe Tuxford/NZSO
To end the concert, glory belongs again to the three brilliant trumpets, impressive in their high range in Telemann’s Concerto for Three Trumpets and Timpani in D major. Accompanied by the timpani, they bring extrovert grandeur to the opening slow ‘Intrada’ and the ‘Allegro’ that follows. The excellent detailed programme notes (found only on-line, an irritating NZSO practice) tell us that the work is sometimes called Concerto for Two Oboes, Three Trumpets and Timpani, and as the trumpets and timpani fall silent in the slow middle movement, we are treated to another lovely, plaintive oboe solo from Orr.
The full ensemble returns for the Vivace finale, bouncing along with great rhythmic zest and momentum, and, with consummate playing from all, the programme ends triumphantly, earning an enthusiastic ovation from the sold-out Kapiti audience.
With five more concerts ahead on the tour, music-lovers in Palmerston North, Napier, Rotorua, Hamilton and Tauranga should make sure they enjoy the ‘Timeless Beauty’ concert in their town. More details and booking information here.
NZSO Timeless Beauty: Handel and Telemann Kapiti 6 March, 2025.