Concert Review: NZSO, Auckland Town Hall

Conductor Hamish McKeich. Photo / Supplied

On Saturday, Auckland had its first taste, nine years late, of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra's annual celebration of homegrown music.

But did the evening live up to its Shakespeare-inspired title of Enchanted Islands?

After a short Fanfare from Ross Harris, rising up from a Wagnerian underworld to herald a bright and triplet-laced new world ahead, Anthony Ritchie's A Shakespeare Overture provided the first salute to The Bard.

As impressed as one might be with this student work of the composer, given with all the pizzazz that the players and conductor Hamish McKeich could muster, it still remains a 21-year-old's meld of assorted mid-20th-century masters.

Douglas Lilburn was represented by his Four Canzonas. True, it is difficult not to succumb to the "big tune" of the first, winding through strumming strings, but either his 1942 Allegro or the 1947 Diversions would have been far worthier of inclusion.

Lyell Cresswell's new Piano Concerto swept all before it, with a soloist in Stephen De Pledge who combined searing virtuosity with an almost incandescent naturalness in the score's more intimate sections.

Gareth Farr's settings of 10 Shakespeare Sonnets ran, alas, for 28 overblown minutes instead of the programme's promised 8.

Soprano Kirsten Morrell was unconvincing and vocally thin-toned; Tama Waipara scored with sincerity and sensitivity, making sense of the Shakespeare and giving us a hint of a robust baritone that many would like to hear more of.

Chris Gendall's Gravitas may have lived up to its title in terms of cerebral complexity, but in the concert hall it was the purest musical ecstasy.

We were blown away by its swoops and gasps, swarming pizzicato fields and clever effects in which harmonies rippled as if a sonic pebble had been thrown into them. More please.

What: New Zealand Symphony Orchestra.

Where: Auckland Town Hall.

When: Saturday.