APO Season Brochure 2021

THE CLASSICIST
7.30pm, Thursday 22 April
Auckland Town Hall
Conductor Giordano Bellincampi
Beethoven Symphony No.1
Beethoven Symphony No.2
Beethoven Symphony No.3 ‘Eroica’
Right from the very first note of his
very first symphony, Beethoven does
something new. No symphony had
ever started on such an unexpected
chord. Yet here’s the paradox: these
first two symphonies fit quite happily
within the classical mould Haydn and
Mozart had created. Haydn, in
particular, would have appreciated
their quicksilver wit.
With the colossal Third, though, the
mould is shattered and cast aside.
A symphony on such a gigantic
scale was totally unprecedented.
This is where Beethoven truly
begins to reshape music.
Supported by the Rua & Clarrie Stevens
Charitable Trust
ON THE DANUBE
7.30pm, Thursday 8 July
Auckland Town Hall
Conductor Giordano Bellincampi
Violin Benjamin Morrison
J. Strauss II On the Beautiful Blue Danube
Korngold Violin Concerto
Mahler Blumine
Brahms Symphony No.3
This concert shows Vienna at the hinge
of the nineteenth and twentieth century.
Strauss’s waltzes are so familiar that it’s
easy to overlook their golden, autumnal
elegance. It’s also easy to forget that
Brahms, a friend and admirer of
Strauss, is the other side of the coin.
His tempestuous Third Symphony is the
high summer of Romanticism. Mahler’s
lyrical Blumine was originally intended
for his First Symphony, but he cut it, and
it was rediscovered years after he died.
Benjamin Morrison, the sole Kiwi
member of the Vienna Philharmonic,
makes his debut with the APO for
Korngold’s utterly glorious Violin
Concerto. Profoundly romantic, it
looks back to a vanished world.
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