Review: Stephen De Pledge at Auckland Town Hall

New Zealand's world-class concerts usually play to an Auckland Town Hall with far too many empty seats, so experiencing one of its programmes in the building's smaller concert chamber, in a shoulder-to-shoulder audience, generates a real sense of occasion.

Stephen De Pledge achieved this in his Thursday recital, setting off with the familiar - Beethoven's Pathetique Sonata.

Despite a few memorising fumbles and overly brutal dynamic touches in the final Rondo, De Pledge achieved an enviable reconciliation of drama and structure, even in the carefully measured lyricism of the Adagio.

Later on, Brahms' two Rhapsodies of Opus 79 benefited from the same sense of balance, particularly in the surging phrases of the second.

Debussy's first set of Images could not have been more exquisitely drawn, especially in the subtle voicings of Hommage a Rameau and a final Mouvement that lived up to the composer's stipulation of "capricious but precise".

A more contemporary Impressionism was afoot in three Landscape Preludes that De Pledge had commissioned from local composers. Jenny McLeod pondered West Coast serenity with the occasional fiery outburst while John Psathas lulled us with the deceptive simplicity of his Sleeper.

Ross Harris's A Landscape with Too Few Lovers took its colours as well as its title from Colin McCahon, inspiring De Pledge to explore the darker, pedal-drenched sonorities of his instrument.

On the lighter side, De Pledge had already diverted us with two "syncopations" from Billy Mayerl.

The 1936 Shallow Waters channelled the spirit of a Chopin Nocturne; the 1938 Railroad Rhythm, was punched out with such verve that it seemed as if Vivian Ellis's Coronation Scot (written in the same year, as it happens) had been put through the Prokofiev mincing machine.

In fact, the Russian composer would provide the Grand Finale with his Seventh Sonata, a high voltage affair, delivered in the spirit in which it was written.

The Finale was heart-in-mouth stuff, a little like taking on a 35km/h corner at 100, with De Pledge never faltering for even a flicker of a second.

Any encore at all would have been generous; Debussy's Little Shepherd proved to be a gem of understatement.