It was distressing to see so many empty seats at the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra's Spirit of Anzac concert. Was this because it was scheduled on the eve of a long weekend, or are concertgoers suffering from a surfeit of World War I commemorations?
In terms of presentation, too, did less than an hour's actual music really need a distracting interval?
The concert's byline "Voices from the Field" made poetic connections. Alas, a blandly forgettable Elegy by Australian Frederick Septimus Kelly (1881-1916), however warmly delivered by the strings under Hamish McKeich, would surely not have made the muster, were it not a tribute to the poet Rupert Brooke.
George Butterworth's A Shropshire Lad is made of sterner stuff; full orchestra and conductor caught the shifting moods in a score that reveals the passions underneath its pastoral veneer.
At this point, the lights went up. Yet, an extra work could well have been accommodated - perhaps Ravel's Le Tombeau de Couperin, to inject some Gallic astringency?
