Pianist Yu Delights Audience
The Whanganui Orchestra brought popular piano soloist Matthew Yu back to the stage of the Prince Edward Auditorium to reprise his majestic Beethoven concerto, this time with the Mozart 23.
A superb soloist, Yu thrilled the capacity audience with his true Mozartian style. A flawless, professional, seemingly effortless performance from the accomplished soloist brought cheers and huge applause from the delighted audience.
The concert had a shaky start with the performance of Poncielli’s Dance of the Hours. This is a real orchestral pot-boiler and as such is well known by concert goers. Let’s call this a warm-up for the first guest solo performance, with orchestra, of The Lark Ascending. Young violin soloist Fumiko Koshikawa played this demanding lyrical piece beautifully. Koshikawa gave a melodic, perfectly in tune performance, allowing for conductor Errol Christiansen to mould the different sections of the orchestra to shape and assist the soloist. Hats off to Christiansen as this piece doesn’t seem to have a downbeat anywhere in sight. They started in time, and finished in time. Bravii!
Borodin’s The Steppes of Central Asia, another well-known orchestral piece, starts with solo horn, often muffed by nervous players. Not so here, the solo horn played robustly and tunefully, setting the scene for some good ensemble/section work, notably brass and woodwind. The violin section which in concerts past has suffered from tuning problems, played well, in tune and in time. A huge improvement. Bravii! Unfortunately, untunefulness migrated west, and infected the cello section who struggled throughout to maintain balance with unmatched bowing techniques and a lack of cohesion.
Ultimately though this is a sectional show-off piece, and each section did come to the fore. The audience loved the piece and applauded generously.
A good concert with excellent soloists, which shows marked improvement in some sections. The Whanganui Orchestra is here to stay and must be applauded for a generous and difficult programme.