Classical review: Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra

Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra. Photo / Adrian Malloch

Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra should be very pleased with its resident composer.

In a lively interview before Thursday's A Fateful Symphony concert, Kenneth Young praised the APO for "the best programming in the country by a country mile".

Just minutes later, his Invocation proved a lush, but subtly tinctured overture for the evening. Young had already mentioned the care that conductor Carlos Miguel Prieto took with the new score, and it showed.

Invocation lays out a world of stillness and languor, built around the expressive, searching melodic thread of Martin Lee's oboe d'amore.

The work is in Young's extremely approachable style, but there were pungent harmonic touches, and an incipient tension in its angular theme.

Ning Feng won the Michael Hill Competition in 2005 playing Brahms. After many return visits from the Chinese violinist, we were at last to hear him tackle a concerto as adventurous as the night's piece by Benjamin Britten.

This 1939 work is a unique blend of the tough and tender; a battle between the aggressive and the lyrical. There is terseness to rival Shostakovich coupled with a frank emotionalism that wins out in the piece's final conciliation.

Ning Feng caught all of this, with the able partnership of conductor and orchestra. High, lonely melodies spoke of piercing heartbreak while the utter fury of the second movement found dazzling release in Britten's fibre-testing cadenza.

An encore was generous and appreciated: a daring and dramatic sail through Paganini's final Caprice.

One can become jaded with Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony, shuddering at its melodramatic blasts of fate and rowdy, chest-thumping Finale.

Yet, with an alert, well-primed orchestra, under a conductor who maintains momentum, it can, and did, cast its spell.

More than ever before, I felt Tchaikovsky's boldness in merging ballet theatre and symphony hall in the wafting rhythms of the first movement, while its Andante cantabile was a treasure trove of tunes.

There was more to come. A throbbing Huapango by the Mexican composer Moncayo may have been dashingly delivered but, after an already long evening, it was just too much.

Where: Auckland Town Hall
Reviewer: William Dart