Rave review for Gemma New and Vancouver Symphony Orchestra
Photo credit: Vancouver Symphony Orchestra
Review: VSO audience thrilled with Gemma New, Augustin Hadelich performances
By David Gorgon Duke
Vancouversun.com
April 17, 2024
New Zealand-born conductor Gemma New made an impressive debut guiding the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra in an exceptionally well-considered program Friday evening at the Orpheum.
New has led the Hamilton Philharmonic for a while, but it’s clear she is ready to leapfrog into the next level of assignments with guest conducting gigs in Vancouver and Seattle later this month.
A good part of New’s success is her programming prowess. Holst’s The Planets was the draw for the program, and proved a convincing demonstration of New’s way with a classic for extra large orchestra. The VSO trundles out The Planets with considerable frequency. And, judging from the nearly full house for the Musically Speaking program Friday, there is always an audience for Holst’s greatest hit. New delivered it with dispatch, though, to be truthful, we’ve heard the orchestra play with greater precision and verve. Not that it mattered: the audience loved what they heard.
It was the program’s first half that set New apart from many other VSO guests. Choosing an all-British program was playing to her repertoire strengths, but starting with a contemporary work, Die Windsbraut by London-based Alissa Firsova, was a stroke of genius. The VSO has delivered quite the smorgasbord of short contemporary works by women in the last little while; many have proved undistinguished — at best. But Firsova’s piece is absolutely first rate, a neo-expressionist item suggested by the famous painting of Alma Mahler in the arms of her one-time lover, painter Oskar Kokoschka. Firsova knows her way around a big colourful orchestra, and her sly references to the sound world of early 20th century Vienna was spot on. This was music one wanted to hear again and kudos to New for bringing it to us.
Nonetheless, the highlight of the concert, in every possible sense, was New’s productive collaboration with violinist Augustin Hadelich in Benjamin Britten’s still rarely programmed Violin Concerto, dating from the early years of Britten’s self-exile in North America. It’s a one-off, a road not taken by a still young composer. Later in life the composer expressed his own reservations — “I think I bit off then a bit more than I could chew”— and revised the piece.
Although Violin Concerto remains something of a sport in the Britten catalogue, it’s a marvellous, rich, darkly demanding proposition. Hadelich doesn’t so much play the thing as live it, his obvious belief that this is great music is completely convincing. How one wishes the composer could have heard of what Hadelich makes of his problem child opus.
Hadelich’s collaboration with New was just as impressive. New was there to keep things on track, and to occasionally tame the more freakish moments in the orchestral writing. Otherwise she took it as a given that she was there to support and engage with her soloist. And it was as fine and exciting a concerto performance as Vancouver has heard in ages, one that spoke to an audience no doubt unfamiliar with the work, but enchanted and moved nonetheless. They may have come for the Holst, but they leapt to their feet for the Britten.
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