There was a quiet buzz around Aotea Square on Wednesday night, graced by Tai Whetuki, Lisa Reihana's imposing video. Meanwhile, in a Town Hall reconfigured for cabaret ambience with tables in the stalls, Water and Light was a disappointing musical launch for the Auckland Arts Festival.
The first half of the programme pursued the theme of water as reflected in works by Mussorgsky, Mendelssohn and Takemitsu.
It was not until the Japanese composer's I Hear the Water Dreaming that the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra and conductor Kenneth Young evoked the magic so sorely needed - immediately before it, Mendelssohn's Hebrides Overture had been a laboriously low-tide affair.
The Takemitsu would have been the perfect opener, bewitching us with its scene-setting wash of horn, harps and bowed vibraphone.
After interval, the eco sensibilities that so often inform Takemitsu's music were treated at greater length and with less subtlety in Kenneth Young's newly commissioned In Paradisum.
