In keeping with our season's theme of COLLABORATIONS, this programme showcases many of the fabulous string-instrument performers in Wellington. These people play many roles with each other in different ensembles, performing as colleagues, friends, students, or as ex-students alongside the teachers who helped form them. Sometimes their collaborations are one-offs, sometimes they last a lifetime. Together they make Wellington’s musical life vibrant and enduring.
We invite the New Zealand String Quartet to lead our string sections in Edward Elgar’s Introduction and Allegro, a piece which opens the concert with a big Romantic flourish and a touch of Baroque fugue playfulness. Sometimes the quartet play as virtuosic soloists, sometimes they blend into the ensemble, much like the flexible roles our musicians inhabit within this city.
The orchestra continues its Elgar theme with his cello concerto. Cellist Inbal Meggido, who frequently leads the Orchestra Wellington cello section, steps up to take the solo. This work of emotional virtuosity is a poignant response to the tragedies of the First World War. The music’s emotional intensity holds nothing back, and the cello’s deep, autumnal tone is the perfect vehicle for conveying a sense of both beauty and loss.
The orchestra’s collective virtuosity is on display in Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra, a work that gives the audience a peek under the bonnet of how orchestral players collaborate. It breaks the ensemble into solos and pairs and unusual groupings so one can truly appreciate how an orchestra creates the incredible palette of sounds of which it is capable. There are haunting fragments from different solo instruments or groups, soft brass chorales, and elements of Bartók’s mysterious “night music” style. This is one of Bartók’s most accessible works yet it demonstrates his genius, progressing from darkness to light and ending with a formidably complex fugue.
This programme is proudly supported by concert partner The Adam Foundation.
We welcome the New Zealand String Quartet to perform.
