Music review: APO, Holy Trinity Cathedral

Baritone Teddy Tahu Rhodes genially led the first two sing-alongs.

Something for everyone in this popular annual performance.

If the test of Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra's annual Celebrate Christmas was its popularity, then a full house for a second performance must be the ultimate accolade.

With a seasonal and seasoned star in baritone Teddy Tahu Rhodes, a personable host in Australian conductor Benjamin Northey as well as a good, old-fashioned community singalong, this was a programme with something for everyone.

Even those with a hankering for feistier fare could enjoy the APO's trumpets welcoming us with Britten's Fanfare for St Edmundsbury.

It may not have been without blemish, but the sonic alchemy of tangled lines coming together in a blaze worked its magic.

Despite Northey talking up the cathedral's acoustic ambience and sense of spirituality, a sprightly Torelli Christmas Concerto was smudged by wan violin solos. Traditional repertoire worked better.

Respighi's Adoration of the Magi drew one in with finely modulated woodwind solos; Vaughan Williams' rarely heard Fantasia on Christmas Carols even achieved the sumptuous.

Teddy Tahu Rhodes exerted some authority with Handel's The Trumpet Shall Sound but a flatness of tone and edgy intonation took the lustre from his solos in the Vaughan Williams.

Similar problems arose with Cornelius' The Three Kings, hindering the exultant lines from soaring over the Graduate Choir's chorales.

Being Christmas, a smattering of kitsch had to be condoned.

The APO romped through Leroy Anderson's A Christmas Festival, sleigh bells and all, while two short carols by John Rutter bubbled away with the choir in good form and the orchestra enjoying putting a Latin beat behind the second.

Rhodes genially led us in the first two singalongs and memories stirred when the Graduate sopranos took to the skies for David Willcocks' descant in Hark the Herald Angels Sing.

Conductor Terence Maskell grouped his singers in a semi-circle for his simple but clever arrangement of Silent Night, complete with stirring crescendos to rally the audience into its most fervent response of the afternoon.

Classical review

What: Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra.
Where: Holy Trinity Cathedral.
When: Saturday.