We hear too little Messiaen in concert and that is a shame, considering his importance and the infinite approachability of his music. The Ascension, four 1935 "symphonic meditations", was a spiritually uplifting launch for Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra's season finale on Thursday, under music director Eckehard Stier.
Messiaen's opening vision of Christ, sounding like a roving improvisation on a heavenly organ, billowed and bloomed, despite an occasionally ragged ensemble.
The work's first Alleluia was caught by birdsong-like wind sonorities, nestled in between sinuous orchestral unisons. The second, led by a jaunty trio of trumpets, was answered by Christ's final prayer, in which the rapturous string chorale echoed what wind and brass had given us to open the piece.
After interval, Stier continued his Mahlerian journey with the popular Fifth Symphony. If Mahler considered that the symphony should embrace and reveal the world, then here the first movement alone is a veritable universe.
Stier and the musicians relished cataclysmic contrasts, from the stark almost military ambience of the first pages, with trumpeter Brent Grapes in fine form, to sad klezmer-tinged laments, realised in exquisite detail.
