William Dart review: Auckland Choral at Holy Trinity Cathedral

Elizabeth Mandeno, Dilys Fong, Sid Chand and Jarvis Dams in the Auckland Choral at Holy Trinity Cathedral. Photo / Randy Weaver Photo / Randy Weaver

Composers Jonathan Dove and Morten Lauridsen are popular with choirs for their highly approachable music and unerring skill in writing for voices.

Dove’s Vast Ocean of Light proved an ambitious launch for Auckland Choral’s Lux Aeterna/Beethoven concert. Organist Philip Smith dispensed shimmering colours throughout, although flowing lines needed more incisiveness, as did Dove’s rich and comfortably dissonant chords.

Lauridsen’s Lux Aeterna brought in Pipers Sinfonia, and conductor Uwe Grodd expertly explored the shifting moods of its five movements.

Pianist Michael Houston in the Auckland Choral at Holy Trinity Cathedral. Photo / Randy Weaver

Resonant strings and choristers conveyed just the right sense of reverence for the opening Introitus, while individual singers were as one in the fluctuating tempi of O Nata Lux. Veni, Sancte Spiritus was fittingly exuberant and Elizabeth Mandeno, Dilys Fong, Sid Chand and Jarvis Dams were a strong quartet of soloists in the Miserere.

After the interval, it was back to the classics, with a particularly punchy Te Deum by Haydn, its three movements comprising two great shouts of joy wrapped around a lustrously sung minor key Adagio.

There were orchestral challenges, well handled by the busy violins, with Grodd and his musicians revelling in the syncopations towards the end of the work.

Auckland Choral and Pipers Sinfonia with pianist Michael Houston and conductor Uwe Grodd. Photo / Randy Weaver

Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy is far from a masterwork but, with Michael Houstoun as soloist, it became the evening’s major offering.

Spellbound by this man delivering the ramble of the opening piano solo with such impeccable timing and improvisatory elan made me think of actors credited with being able to draw drama from a telephone directory. When the other players joined in for some variations, results were variable, but wayward horns were more than compensated for by elegant flute and merry oboes.

The choir joined in for just the last five minutes, singing with such gusto that Beethoven’s cheeky little march won me over. Led by the soloists, with the able addition of Dagmara Tyszler and Campbell McGregor, it was a preview of better things to come in the composer’s final symphony.

What: Auckland Choral

Where: Holy Trinity Cathedral

When: Saturday.