Review: Daring flourish marks end of successful concert year

Morag Atchison. Photo / Supplied

Auckland Choral's Messiah is a major event in our city's musical life, marking the close of the year's concert season and a particularly successful 12 months for Auckland Choral under the directorship of Uwe Grodd.

With Miranda Hutton leading the strings of Pipers Sinfonia, the familiar Overture proved an irresistible welcoming, its Allegro bubbling over with Handelian energy.

If David Hamilton's Comfort Ye was occasionally wanting in robustness, few tenors could match his daring final flourish in Ev'ry Valley and dramatic presentation of Thou Shalt Break Them.

Morag Atchison, never less than musicianly and remarkably nimble tackling the coloratura of Rejoice Greatly, was burdened with an intrusively tight vibrato that seriously undercut her subtly decorated I Know That My Redeemer Liveth.

Wendy Dawn Thompson, last seen swooping around the Aotea stage on a Segway as Rossini's Isabella in The Italian Girl in Algiers, showed a rare ability to cut straight to the emotional core of her arias.

One felt the weight of every word in He Was Despised, with some utterly spellbinding moments when her burnished mezzo floated unaccompanied throughout the hall.

Jared Holt gave a workmanlike performance but was uncomfortable in the lower register, failing to muster enough rage for Why Do the Nations or create the requisite wonderment in The Trumpet Shall Sound.

Grodd's year with the choir has been a good one. From the lilting clarity of And the Glory to the final resounding Amen, there was a real engagement with Handel's score.

Two choruses, rescued from the cutting-room floor, showed the singers coping well with sturdy counterpoint. Grodd took risks too, stressing those extraordinary textural shifts in Glory to God with memorable results - only in Behold the Lamb of God were there twinges of insecurity.

While Pipers Sinfonia gave of their very best, the evening would have been much poorer without the two continuo men, John Wells and Indra Hughes.

Both provided apt and often ingenious musical commentary, Wells' harpsichord making us feel the sting of the smiters in He Was Despised and Hughes' chamber organ offering an insouciant ramble around the fringes of All we like sheep.

What: The Messiah with Auckland Choral.
Where: Auckland Town Hall.
When: Monday night, last night