Review: NZ Premieres at Auckland Town Hall

While most Composers Workshops are "in house" affairs, mounted before a small audience of involved parties, NZ Premieres, the latest initiative of the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra and NBR New Zealand Opera, brought the music out of its composerly closet, as six singers and composers displayed the fruits of 12 months of collaboration in concert.

Antony Ernst, the APO's director of artistic planning, was a skilful MC, relaxed in the challenging task of interviewing composers on stage.

Offerings ranged from Penny Dodd's Medea, a scena that owed as much to Broadway as Euripides, through to the contemplative orientalisms of Jeff Lin's Exile from the Native Land.

While singing was variable, Barbara Paterson and Barbara Graham stood out by putting the printed score aside.

This certainly made Medea's saga triply chilling, and, in Graham's case, created a sense of involvement with Matthew Crawford's shimmering setting of Karlo Mila's A Place to Stand.

Full marks to Crawford for balancing singer and orchestra; too often, singers strained against the orchestral powers that Hamish McKeich invoked from the APO.

This was certainly the case with Hadleigh Adams, battling the full blast of David Hamilton's pile-driver orchestrations in Breaking the Quiet.

Julia Booth, with a luxuriance of tone unique in the evening, worked hard to be heard in Anthony Young's The Angle of Reflection, and some of Young's tricky scoring also made for exposed orchestral moments. Yet, who could deny the consummate artistry that lay behind such a brilliant, evanescent web of sound?

Other welcome musical touches included the saturated intensity of Lin's harmonic surges, Hamilton's rousing brass choirs and the plein-air openness of Crawford's oceanic minimalism.

Before the concert, the APO's Barbara Glaser and Aidan Lang of NBR New Zealand Opera spoke with fervour about the importance of this project. We can but hope that a local opera is in the pipeline.