NZSO ‘Legends’: Masaaki Suzuki reveals new magic in beloved classics

Masaaki Suzuki conducts the NZSO

Photo credit: NZSO/Phoebe Tuxford

The Michael Fowler Centre was packed for the NZSO’s recent ‘Legends’ concert, with a palpable buzz of anticipation as the last members of the audience found their seats. I’ve always believed that if you can’t sell Beethoven, you can’t sell anything, and by combining his music with that of J S Bach and Mozart, composers almost equally popular, the ‘sold out’ sign was inevitable.

But there was another “legend” on this bill, revered Japanese conductor, Masaaki Suzuki. New Zealand audiences met him first when he brought his Bach Collegium Japan to the Aotearoa New Zealand Festival of the Arts in 2014, and again in 2017 when he toured New Zealand with the outstanding young musicians of Juilliard415 for Chamber Music NZ.

Conductor Masaaki Suzuki

…he and his formidable Bach Collegium Japan ensemble are deservedly world-famous.

Photo supplied: NZSO

Suzuki works with a range of repertoire, but he and the singers and period instrumentalists of his formidable Collegium ensemble are deservedly world-famous for their performances and award-winning recordings of music from the Baroque period, particularly the music of J S Bach.  

The ‘Legends’ programme, Suzuki’s debut with the NZSO, began with Bach, his 3rd Orchestral Suite BWV 1068, played by a smallish orchestral ensemble, complete with harpsichord.

The disposition of the musicians on stage was immediately striking. First and second violins faced each other across the front of the stage in an antiphonal arrangement. Violas were beside the seconds, cellos and basses beside and behind the first violins, with the harpsichord in the centre. This arrangement of the strings was maintained throughout the concert and proved significant for the impact of the whole programme.

But back to Bach. His 3rd Suite is well known in part because of its beautifully melodious 2nd movement, the Air, now often known as Air on the G string after a 19th century arrangement. The Suite opens with an Overture, taken here at a good clip, the ensemble very nicely balanced and the trumpets bright and impressive.

In the Air, I was particularly aware of the seating arrangement. With his right hand Suzuki paid nice attention to the 2nd violins and violas and their singing contrapuntal lines, with the famous theme above, shone beautifully through the texture. Graceful Gavottes and rapidly dancing Bourrées, again featuring fine trumpet playing, led without much break to a final lively Gigue.

Suzuki conducts without a baton. In this Suite, his expressive hands drew a response from the orchestra that was not always impeccably crisp and precise. All was balanced and well-paced, but many of the NZSO musicians are not Baroque specialists and this showed.

Masaaki Suzuki

“…sculpting a transparent and shapely performance with care for details.”

Photo credit: NZSO/Phoebe Tuxford

Mozart’s Symphony No. 25 in G minor, K.183, was another matter. Mozart wrote the work aged just 17, an astonishing achievement. The use of the first movement, Allegro con brio, for the movie ‘Amadeus’ has contributed to its fame. More interesting, though, is the highly characterful writing, in a minor key, with propulsive syncopations and a dark emotional tone, probably related to the influence on the young Mozart of Haydn’s explorations of the late 18th century German aesthetic of Sturm und Drang (‘Storm and Stress’).  

Suzuki’s minimal conducting approach was highly successful here, producing the crispness I’d missed in the Bach. The first movement had a lovely lightness, with a nicely off-the-string accompaniment to the beautifully played oboe solo. The graceful Andante second movement showed wonderful and detailed attention by conductor and players to the emphases in the thematic lines.

Mozart’s scoring for pairs of oboes and bassoons and four horns offered him opportunities for striking writing, as in the Trio section of the 3rd movement Minuet and Trio. The NZSO players delivered this idiosyncratic short movement brilliantly, and in the final Allegro the seating arrangement again worked well, the two violin sections conversing across the stage.

After the interval came the undoubted highlight of the concert, a staggeringly good performance of Beethoven’s marvellous Symphony No. 3 in E flat Major, his Opus 55, known as “Eroica” (“Heroic”).

A landmark in both music history and Beethoven’s own oeuvre, the “Eroica” is considerably longer than any symphony before it. When he composed the work, Beethoven was aware of and appalled by his encroaching deafness. He’d already penned the moving Heiligenstadt Testament, expressing his feelings about his condition, his thoughts of suicide and his decision to continue composing.

There’s a lot going on in the 3rd Symphony. An extraordinary complexity in thematic and structural development, surprising harmonic progressions, and revolutionary themes and references are all combined with profound expression of Beethoven’s personal emotions.  

I’ve heard the “Eroica” in performance and recordings numerous times throughout my life, and believe that this performance rates among the very best I’ve experienced. In the long first movement, Suzuki and the orchestra not only found all the pace and balance required, but a lovely emphasis on the movement’s lyrical moments and amazing clarity of thematic and harmonic development. Here, and in the movements that followed, this quietly compelling conductor revealed new aspects of this favourite symphony, sculpting a transparent and shapely performance with careful attention to little details and inner voices shining out.

Suzuki’s care for detail, and his subtly expressive approach, gave us a Funeral March in the second movement ranging from poignant loveliness to powerful grandeur, the fugal section beautifully shaped and the solemn breadth of musical development deeply moving. The Scherzo and Trio that followed offered more great playing from the NZSO’s string sections and a splendid Trio from the three horns.

The Finale is a theme and variations, based on a theme Beethoven had used in earlier works. The movement develops from lightness to nobility, with a stirring martial section and a triumphant ending. Suzuki held the audience’s unflagging, rapt attention to the end, and he and the musicians received a deservedly huge ovation.

NZSO with Masaaki Suzuki

“…the ‘Legends’ programme attracted a full house in the Michael Fowler Centre.”

Photo credit: NZSO

I’ve sometimes criticised the NZSO for unadventurous repertoire choices. For this concert, they stayed with the safest of popular programming, but chose a conductor who revealed throughout something special and new about the music. Both old hands and newer audience members had a deeply satisfying experience and headed home with their joy unquenched by Wellington’s horizontal rain.

NZSO ‘Legends’ Music by Bach, Mozart and Beethoven, Masaaki Suzuki (conductor) Wellington 9 May, 2025