Review: The Graduate Choir at Auckland Grammar Great Hall

There is much to admire about the Graduate Choir's performance.

Before a note was in the air, Kerry Stevens, the evening's smooth MC, told us the acoustics about to be experienced were "nowhere near those of your lounge" and that the evening's music would not be found "all on one CD".

The Graduate Choir's Mendelssohn Remembered was clearly destined to be a special occasion and so it was.

The opening liturgical settings revealed the excellence of Terence Maskell's choir. A singer himself, with an unrivalled grasp of the voice, Maskell has an enviable ability to create billowing choral textures.

And billow they did, with the Grammar hall's many hard surfaces - extending, alas, to excruciating wooden seats. Mendelssohn's Hallelujahs and Amens pealed around us; pure, clear soprano tones seemed suspended in the firmament.

The acoustics were not so flattering when Gina Sanders sang Ich Harrete des Herrn, in what would have been a perfectly gauged performance in a smaller venue. The soprano's dramatic leaps into upper register produced an almost painful sonic boom which, combined with the swells and occasional snarls of Philip Smith's digital organ, lent an Expressionist air to the piece.

Paul Tarling delivered the composer's B flat Organ Sonata with the taste and acumen that almost made one overlook the flaws of the music itself. His meticulous articulation and liquid-toned registrations certainly redeemed the sentimental Andante religioso.

Not all of the offerings were on the sacred side. A secular bracket featured the men and women in two amiable part-songs, clustering separately, drawing-room style, around Sheryl Clarke's piano, and the evening ended with a selection of Mendelssohn's "outdoor songs" of Opus 59.

There was so much to admire, from the shapely phrasing of Im Grunen to the thrilling surge of tenors in Abschied vom Walde.

It had been announced earlier that one of the men, Pene Pati, had just won the New Zealand Aria Competition. The fact that a voice of such stature blended so seamlessly with those alongside him is what makes the Graduate Choir such a treasure.