KEY POINTS:
Two months ago soul diva Dionne Warwick was fronting the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra singing Burt Bacharach; on Friday it was Dame Kiri Te Kanawa's turn, with more traditional concert-hall fare of Mozart, Strauss and Mahler.
One could feel anticipation coursing through the capacity audience as conductor Lawrence Renes dashed off Mozart's Figaro Overture with iridescent woodwind colouring and scampering violins, whetting the appetite.
Te Kanawa's first bracket of three Mozart concert arias proved testing, although the only cause for fleeting nervousness was the runs in "Chi sa, chi sa, qual sia."
The voice has surrendered the sensuous beauty of its prime, but this was still a star turn. The occasional licence with Mozart's line in "Vado, ma dove?, a tendency to lose power in the lower register and the occasional slips in synchronisation with the orchestra were minor issues.
Richard Strauss' "Morgen" seemed anxious at first and, despite a solicitous Renes and a soaring violin solo from Vesa-Matti Leppanen, there were bars in which things were not quite together.
"Standchen" was all throwaway charm, although the rapture of "Zueignung" was a little fiercer and faster than some might have liked.
After interval, Mahler's Fourth Symphony cast a spell from its opening bars, with Renes determined to highlight its fragmented textures.
Violinist Leppanen led a cajoling and deliberately paced landler in the second movement, amidst swooning glissandi, although the effectiveness of the following Poco Adagio was hampered by sourness in the strings, especially in its final minute.
The final movement proved to be Te Kanawa's finest hour. Here there was real interaction between singer and orchestra, as its childlike vision of heaven unfolded.
With constant side-glances to Renes, who was fashioning a brilliant orchestral fabric around her, the singer revealed the adrenalin that had been less evident in both Mozart and Strauss, reminding us of her unassailable stature.
A smaller audience turned up on the following evening to hear Renes tackle Bruckner's Eighth Symphony in a performance that was as satisfying spiritually as it was musically. His grasp of this monumental score was awe-inspiring.
There were crisp woodwind solos, strings both stern and shimmering, and lashings of the sort of grandeur that one gets from a resonant row of 32-foot organ pipes.
It is no accident that the last two movements are marked "ceremonial" and the great Finale was a primal surge to remember.
Review
* Who: Dame Kiri Te Kanawa and the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra
* Where: Auckland Town Hall
* Reviewer: William Dart
