Concert Review: Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra, Auckland Town Hall

Jayce Ogren got a small orchestra to respond nimbly to a varied menu. Photo / Supplied

The orchestra's second Inspired by Bach concert on Thursday dispensed a flurry of fugues, with toccatas and chorales on the side. In fact, its JSB variety show featured only a few items straight from the pen of the master.

One was John Wells' flamboyant D minor Toccata and Fugue, complete with malevolently growling pedal notes, frisky recitative work and a closing swirl worthy of Virgil Fox.

The Graduate Choir seemed overly cautious chorusing in Cantata 133, briskly paced by conductor Jayce Ogren with a nimble smallish orchestra. Taking a shoobie-doobie saunter through Bach's Little Organ Fugue, a smaller group of singers missed the hip suavity of the Swingles.

While Stokowski's transcription of Wells' Toccata and Fugue made for a rip-roaring conclusion, Elgar's orchestration of the C minor Fantasia and Fugue inspired the finest playing of the evening.

From its opening oboe elegy over ominous bass drum, it revealed as much about Elgar as Bach. Most impressively, Ogren seemed to have found some unexpected and graceful waltzes in its early pages.

Despite edgy first violins, Felix Weingartner's transcription of Beethoven's Grosse Fuge was given a well-groomed performance. Conductor and players seemed well aware of the irony of serving up an erudite and lengthy fugue alla tarantella.

The 20th century responses to Bach were many and varied.

Samuel Barber's Mutations from Bach, from a full brass section with timpani, proved a dramatic return to the stage after interval, despite some unsettling moments of breath control.

There had been no such problem earlier with soprano Rebecca Ryan, who was gloriously confident and full-voiced in Villa-Lobos' Bachianas Brasileiras 5.

If Bach had kept bees was written by Arvo Part before he became the favoured composer of the New Age set. A smaller orchestra, buzzing away against manic woodblocks, seemed to suggest that a polka was eagerly awaiting liberation from the organ book at Leipzig.

Webern's Passcagalia, likened by Ogren to a meeting of Mahler and Bach, was the highlight in the second half of the evening, the orchestra responding well to its sometimes pungent colourings and heady moments worthy of Richard Strauss.

Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra

Where: Auckland Town Hall