KEY POINTS:
The Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra's final concert of its APN News & Media Premier Series attracted one of its best audiences to date. But then, how could a programme that featured Michael Houstoun as soloist and the spectacular Holst's The Planets fail?
The opening Britten Sinfonia da Requiem is a contemplation of war-torn Europe, commissioned, ironically, by the Imperial Government of Japan.
Conductor Mischa Santora engaged with this searing score from its first cataclysmic drum-strokes. The Lacrymosa first movement edged and ebbed into our consciousnesses, pulsating around a noirish saxophone.
The Dies Irae set off with morse-code urgency; the savage fray that ensued was coruscatingly brilliant, leading to the optimistic glow of the final Requiem aeternam.
Houstoun was magisterial in Prokofiev's First Piano Concerto. Debonairly strolling around his instrument after his opening flourish to adjust its lid, the pianist gave every note and phrase its due weight and direction in lines that can so often glitter mindlessly.
After the beautifully modulated lyricism of the Andante assai, the finale was enfant terrible fare; fetching, fiery and fearless.
An encore of a Prokofiev Prelude was played as if Houstoun was rolling pearls on satin.
The orchestra, suitably enlarged, gave Holst's The Planets its rousing best. The APO has not had a good track record with this work, after the truncated version it presented a few years ago.
Nor was this performance complete with Holst's wordless off-stage women's voices in the final movement replaced by an all too visible synthesizer. Any sense of mystery was irretrievably squashed and illusions shattered by the cheap and nasty sounds of a Tomita wannabe.
Otherwise, it was a virtuoso turn. "Mars" battered us in fine gladiatorial style; "Jupiter" stirred up memories of football matches and Stravinsky's Petrushka with the orchestra turning on a pin for Santora's meticulous baton.
The smallest of Holst's planets was allotted an appropriately mercurial scherzo.
Enchantment came with the cool woodwind blends of "Venus" and the airy impressionism of "Saturn". If "Uranus" overstayed his welcome, this was Holst's not the APO's fault and, shonky electronica aside, "Neptune" was a mystical carpet ride to remember.
