NZSO National Youth Orchestra: energy and passion in outstanding performances

The 2025 NZSO National Youth Orchestra with Canadian conductor Adam Johnson

Photo credit: NZSO/Phoebe Tuxford

I read an article in The Atlantic recently about the use of AI to generate music. Under the depressing headline "Nobody Cares If Music Is Real Anymore" the author, Ian Bogost, wrote about a group called Velvet Sundown. "I discovered," he penned, after listening to several of their tracks, "that what may now be the most successful AI group on Spotify is merely, profoundly, and disturbingly innocuous." Later in the article, he suggested "Perhaps no human artist could tolerate producing such soulless lackluster (sic), but an AI is unburdened by shame."

Bogost's article was published in America on 4th July and the day I read it (our 5 July) I went to a concert by this year's NZSO National Youth Orchestra in Wellington's Michael Fowler Centre. You won't be surprised to know that every one of the 74 talented young musicians on the stage cared very much that music is real, and of course there wasn't an innocuous, lacklustre note played in a concert of over two hours.

This year's NYO is outstanding. The programme of mostly late-Romantic repertoire, called “Adventure”, was well-chosen to ensure every section and many soloists had plenty to explore. Under Canadian conductor Adam Johnson, the musicians, aged between 14 and 25, offered confident performances full of energy and passion.

Richard Strauss's tone poem Don Juan, composed by a 24-year-old, depicts the famous womaniser with his own animated opening theme. As this theme interacts with others, his story is told, describing his conquests, perhaps, or romantic assignations. The first is an amorous violin solo, beautifully played by concertmaster Esther Oh, who impressed all evening with numerous solos and assured leadership of the orchestra. The many talents featured in the work included poignant solo oboe, eloquent clarinet and bold horns, followed later by a fine trombone choir and descriptively dissonant trumpets, signalling Don Juan’s death in a duel.

This challenging work – often, Johnson told us, used for orchestral auditions –  required a broad range of instruments, the young Strauss’s colourful orchestration including cor anglais, piccolo and even contrabassoon. It ends quietly as the hero takes his last breaths, the NYO’s lovely string playing growing ever softer.

More Straussian romance followed, as award-winning New Zealand soprano Madison Horman took the stage for five of his orchestral lieder, from Opus 27 and Opus 10. The four Opus 27 songs were written as a wedding gift for the composer’s soprano wife, Pauline de Ahna. Horman has a big, glorious voice, its colours well-suited to Strauss’s music and mostly able to soar over orchestral textures. The quieter opening of Ruhe, meine Seele! (Rest, my soul!) was beautifully gentle and rich-toned, gathering power as the dynamic built.

Soprano Madison Horman

“...a big, glorious voice, well-suited to Strauss’s music.”

Photo credit: NZSO/Phoebe Tuxford

In Heimliche Aufforderung (Secret Invitation), Horman showed a lighter character in joyous singing and in the famous Morgen (Tomorrow), both she and a sensitive orchestra, with lovely harp, allowed time for the beauty to unfold.  Here, and in Zueignung (Devotion) from Strauss’s Opus 10 songs which concluded her set, Horman revealed a talent for emotional communication. After some years of advanced voice studies in the UK and numerous competition successes, her developing European career will take her next to Amsterdam.

For two decades the NZSO has been commissioning new works from young composers for the NYO. Luka Venter’s glacier, premiered in this programme, was a cool and refreshing change in a concert otherwise brimming with the heated emotions of late Romanticism.  

Venter, 2025 Composer in Residence for the NZSO National Youth Orchestra, has spoken eloquently about the new composition and is clear that romantic ideas about “Nature” and its relationship to humans were far from their thoughts when composing glacier.  Instead, they say, “the orchestra itself becomes a glacial body of musical motion”.

The construction of the work is complex and, the composer has told us, makes use of the number nine in both micro and macro structures. I wasn’t able to view the score and enjoyed experiencing glacier solely by listening in this first performance.

The work makes fascinating use of orchestral timbres and textures, with big dramatic gestures, tiny repeated figures and an initially static sense of abstraction. Shifting layers gradually develop in slow and restless movement. Colours flash and shimmer, with fragmentary melodic shapes over a continuous background of sound, mini explosions punctuating the texture.

Kā Roimata o Hine Hukatere (Franz Josef glacier).

“…the orchestra itself becomes a glacial body of musical motion”. (Luka Venter, composer of glacier)

Photo credit: Angelina Pilarinos

Like glaciers themselves with their vivid blue ice, Venter’s glacier is in no way monochromatic. The work is full of imaginative colours, wood blocks, sustained horns, big stripes or bursts of colour, the arpeggiated effect of strings climbing the harmonic series. Low brass gives way to bright and brassy trumpets.

A moment of silence marks a central turning point, quiet timpani underneath and instruments gathering above. A trio of flutes “overblow” their instruments to evoke, perhaps, the compression of snowflakes as the glacier formed. The flutes are in a semi-improvised conversation with a trio of tapped stones, a wonderfully effective use of this percussive timbre.

Coincidentally, 2025 is UNESCO Year of Glacier Preservation. Venter researched glaciers as he created the work, visiting Kā Roimata o Hine Hukatere  (Franz Josef glacier) on the West Coast and Rob Roy, above the Matukituki valley in the Southern Alps. The stones used in the performance were sourced from streams of meltwater running from both glaciers.

After the central section, strings surge, percussion becomes more assertive, dynamic levels lift. Finally, under sparkly little woodwind gestures, high-pitched percussion sounds slip in, triangle, glass chimes and, as the work comes to a gentle conclusion, a sustained vibraphone tone hanging in the air. A remarkable and imaginative work, one I hope to hear again soon.

The programme ended with Rachmaninov’s Second Symphony in E minor Opus 27, a brilliant showcase for this fine youth orchestra. No-one writes or talks about this work without referring to the disastrous reception for Rachmaninov’s First Symphony, but the three young musicians who presented the pre-concert talk provided useful context by explaining the emotional arc of this Second Symphony, from sadness to the triumph of the finale.

The performance confirmed the strengths of the orchestra, an ensemble of superb young players with many accomplished soloists and consistently fine sectional work. The emotional heart of the symphony, the Adagio third movement, was perhaps the highlight. Playing with great musicality and subtle rubato, conductor and musicians completely captured the music’s hyper-romanticism. The beautifully moving oboe solo was as finely judged as those earlier in the symphony by cor anglais, concertmaster and clarinet.

Conductor Adam Johnson with members of the NZSO National Youth Orchestra

“…an electric atmosphere during the final ovation.”

Photo credit: NZSO/Phoebe Tuxford

A joyous Allegro vivace ends the work, again showing off the horn section, soaring strings and the orchestra’s fine timpanist, and allowing all to revel in a big orchestral climax.

The atmosphere in the hall during the prolonged ovation was electric. Everyone, musicians and enthusiastic audience, clearly cared very much that the music was real. An “adventure” indeed, with no AI at all. Bravi tutti!

NZSO National Youth Orchestra ‘Adventure’ Adam Johnson (conductor) Madison Horman (soprano), Wellington 5 July, 2025.