Review: Ute Lemper's Angels over Berlin at Auckland Town Hall

As she did at her exceptional Town Hall show in 2003, on this return visit Ute Lemper proved persuasively she doesn't merely deliver a concert of songs.

Hers is a blood-surging performance full of drama and nuance, politics and culture, sensuality and suggestion - and memorable songs delivered by a rare artist who abandons herself to the music and words of her favourites; Brecht and Weill, and her more recent discovery Astor Piazzolla. And she closed with a by-request bracket of Jacques Brel.

Opening with a sultry Falling in Love Again (in German, with suggestive winks) which segued into an octave-defying scat, Lemper set the tone of the night in which she moved effortlessly across language (German, French, Yiddish, English and Argentinian Spanish) in songs which touched on the tragic and the dark, the menacing and the sexually predatory.

With a few props - a wine glass, a bowler and a boa which was the subject of a very funny tale involving Edith Piaf, Angela Merkel and our Prime Minister's wife - Lemper and her small group wove a journey through time as much as genre, punctuated by extraordinary trumpet (the trombone-like) scatting, political irony (her character Pirate Jenny going to Argentina after the war in search of freedom) and earthy tones.

The Angels over Berlin thread seemed a little forced - an excuse of a narrative but one which allow her to showcase her own appropriately dark composition Blood and Feathers - but this was a concert which constantly surprised and shifted moods.

As with Leonard Cohen, Lemper has a band of consummate and sensitive professionals who go barely noticed (but not unappreciated), such is their empathy.

One niggle: I know we've paid for it, but having that mighty organ as an illuminated backdrop meant this was an intimate cabaret looking like it was being played out in a cathedral. Moody and subdued lighting with some highlighting spots would have allowed for even more atmosphere.

But in the long run it hardly mattered. Lemper did what she does best - create an alluring world of death, decadence, sex and sensuality ... and with the crook of a finger invited you in.

The audience - silent as she sang, then loud and long in applause and appreciation - were her willing victims.