Review: APO at Auckland Town Hall

Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra's Thursday concert was indeed the grand finale promised for the close of its successful APN News & Media Premier Season.

Baldur Bronnimann was in dashing form from the first bars of Prokofiev's Love for Three Oranges. Punching the pace along meant that Prokofiev's clowns were faster on their feet than usual, the players rose to their dazzling best and the atmosphere in the hall bristled with expectation.

A whirlwind scherzo benefited from the extra adrenalin, although more time and space were allotted for violist Robert Ashworth to wax lyrical in Prokofiev's wistful portrait of the Prince and Princess.

With two hardcore fans in Bronnimann and soloist Michael Collins, Weber's First Clarinet Concerto proved the indisputable highlight of the evening.

Weber's dramatic opening, with the conductor emphasising the strings' jagged rhythms, soon melted into a yearning solo from Collins' pearly-toned instrument. The composer's unpredictable shifts of moods enabled the English clarinettist to move from sinuous romantic outpouring to something closer to yodelling jollity.

Moments of poetry, such as the passage for clarinet and horn trio in the Adagio, reminded me of how effective it must have been when Heinrich Barmann, for whom the concerto was written, arranged this theme for clarinet and three men's voices.

After interval, the orchestral contingent was increased for a suitably sumptuous account of the first waltz sequence from Richard Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier. And we were swept along, if not completely away, thanks to a few shaky details, including a sorely exposed double bass solo.

The Finale to end all Finales was Respighi's The Pines of Rome, in a rendition that captured all the glory of that great city. Bronnimann's obvious affection for the score meant that its modernist touches registered vividly.

And no concert could wish for a more spectacular close than the veritable blaze of orchestral might, with six extra brass players fanfaring from the circle.