KEY POINTS:
Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue was the enticing title for the first concert of the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra's Vero Aotea series and it was doubtlessly the Gershwin classic that drew a large and enthusiastic audience
It was not your regular Town Hall muster; trickles of applause broke out between the movements of Dvorak's New World symphony and, as the Gershwin came to a rousing close, the man in front of me took to whistling as if he were calling sheepdogs from six farms away.
Gershwin's Rhapsody, like any piece of "cross-over", can be problematic.
One could sense conductor Christian Knapp trying to catch the zest of the jazz band original but, working with an orchestra, he might as well have tried to Charleston in a crinoline.
Soloist Diedre Irons seemed determined to place the work firmly in the grand romantic piano concerto tradition, lingering over phrases as if searching for the Tristan chord.
We have it from Virgil Thomson that Gershwin himself played it straight, kept the rhythm going and didn't moon around.
Occasionally insecure in idiom, Irons made heavy work of solo passages.
There was an American theme running through the evening. Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man welcomed us, brass and percussion delivering it with just right amount of goosebumps per crotchet. Jonathan Besser's Three Hudson River Pieces seemed rather insubstantial blown up to orchestral size.
I found myself wanting to hear them pepped up and Besserised by the composer's own Bravura ensemble, which would also have bypassed some of the rough brass playing that was inflicted on us.
After interval the New World invigorated the soul.
The strings were at their soaring best, the woodwind chirruped and the brass were unstinting in their nobility. The second movement was perfection through to the final hushed double-bass chords.
All in all, this was the perfect trailer for the next Vero concert which opens with Dvorak's In Nature's Realm on April 10.
What: Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra.
Where: Aotea Centre.
Reviewer: William Dart.
