Gemma New, Principal Conductor and Artistic Advisor of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, is talking with RNZ Concert's Bryan Crump about the orchestra's programme for 2025.
Crump immediately notices she has a medal pinned to her chest.
"Have you been in the wars?" he asks.
"No," she laughs. She's come to RNZ straight from Wellington's Government House, and her investiture as an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit.
It's a well-deserved award for the Wellington-raised violinist who has carved out a career as an international conductor. A few days earlier, she was in London's Royal Albert Hall conducting the BBC Scottish Symphony in her second podium appearance at the BBC Proms.
Gemma New conducts the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra for Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream – incidental music, in the Royal Albert Hall on Friday 16 Aug 2024. Photo: Mark Allan
But New's King's Birthday Honour is also recognition of the role the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra plays in Aotearoa's cultural life. For Kiwi music lovers, the launch of its programme for the coming year is always a significant event.
New herself is taking on four of the big works in the classical symphonic repertoire: Rachmaninov's "Symphonic Dances", Ravel's orchestration of Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition", Bruckner's 7th Symphony, and Mahler's doom-laden 6th Symphony (the one which comes with the hammer blows).
Basically the 'hammer' is a giant mallet, which one of the percussion section has to bring down onto a specially built box from above their head, much like a woodchopper wielding an axe.
It's a tricky - and sometimes dangerous - manoeuvre, as you can see in this video below.
There's plenty of potential for a Gary Larson cartoon or Silly Symphony moment, but Mahler took his hammer blows very seriously.
"The three hammer blows were the fate of the protagonist, which he felt was himself."
And in the wake of writing it, Mahler suffered three personal blows: he lost his job at the Vienna Opera, his eldest daughter died and he was diagnosed with a terminal heart condition.
The superstitious Mahler revised the score, cutting out the third hammer drop, but some conductors prefer to put it back in. What version will New be performing?
She's a bit coy on that one.
"Come to see," she replies. "We are building it especially for this occasion."
Other conductors coming out to work with the NZSO in 2025 include the Australian maestro Simone Young, best known for her interpretations of the music of Wagner, Bruckner and Richard Strauss, but next year she's conducting Brahms. The Japanese master of early music performance, Masaaki Suzuki, joins the orchestra to play J S Bach, Mozart and Beethoven's Eroica Symphony.
Visiting soloists include saxophonist Jess Gillam, pianist Daniil Trifonov, and mezzo Joyce DiDonato (who will sing Berlioz's song cycle "Summer Nights").
Closer to home, New Zealander Amalia Hall will play Bartok's mighty but moving Second Violin Concerto, and the orchestra will present the world premiere of a new sacred work by Kiwi composer Victoria Kelly, who stunned the local classical music scene with her Requiem last year.
Then there's the comic genius of Bret McKenzie, who will join the NZSO to narrate Saint-Saëns' "Carnival of the Animals".
Crump asks New if, given the music she herself will be conducting in 2025, she's going through something of a romantic stage.
"Well, it seems like it for this season. I mean, this is all about emotion and what we go through in life."
And given RNZ Concert is soon to ask listeners to once again vote for their favourite piece of classical music, was New's favourite (at the time of the interview) a romantic work?
"Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition," she replies, "because I played it in the Wellington Youth Sinfonietta when I was twelve, and that's when I decided music is so glorious, I want to do it for ever."
New is currently touring Aotearoa with the NZSO, playing music by Copland, Mozart and premiere performances of Lyell Cresswell's Third Piano Concerto, the last work he wrote before he died, with its dedicatee, Stephen De Pledge playing the piano.
Then it's off to New's other home in Atlanta Georgia, as she prepares for performances in the USA.
