Review: Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra at Auckland Town Hall

If an orchestra's coming-of-age can be charted through its performances of Mahler symphonies, Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra's Sixth, under Eckehard Stier, showed these musicians would not be out of place in any of the world's concert halls.

There was a brusque sense of purpose to Stier's opening march and, later on, strings invested their insistent chords with something of the fury of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, in slow and deliberate motion.

Yet the mood was effortlessly transformed for a passing wind chorale or a yearning duet between Nicola Baker's horn and Dimitri Atanassov's violin.

Stier's subtle handling of tempo and phrasing was the key to the success of the whole symphony, along with his ability to convey Mahler's often-precipitous shifts of emotion. Mahler seems to add a new direction on every page and Stier caught them all.

Any folksiness was underplayed in the Scherzo; Bede Hanley's oboe theme had a real grace to it.

The Andante moderato, with its presentiment of tragedy to come, was leisurely in pace but intense in its characterisation.

Stier was unsparing in portraying the stark despair of the work's Finale, unleashing the often-startling colours of Mahler's score with a sense of the thrill of discovery.

The conclusion was so dramatic that some enthusiastic Mahlerians in the circle burst into applause before the final orchestral stroke.