William Dart review: Auckland Philharmonia’s Viennese Feast

Violinist Amalia Hall and conductor Christoph Altstaedt with the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra at the Auckland Town Hall for the APO Viennese Feast concert.

What: Auckland Philharmonia

Where: Auckland Town Hall

When: Thursday

Reviewer: William Dart

Auckland Philharmonia’s Viennese Feast offered the familiar names of Haydn, Schubert, Brahms and Mahler, but with music considerably less so.

We heard the second movement of Mahler’s Third Symphony via Benjamin Britten’s 1941 arrangement for smaller orchestra - a respectful adaptation for wartime budgets and resources.

Conductor Christoph Altstaedt heeded Britten’s opening directive, “be sure not to hurry”, allowing his players to luxuriate in the lushness, with stirring climaxes that belied numbers on stage.

Haydn’s rarely heard First Violin Concerto saw Altstaedt at the harpsichord, centre stage, cementing his crucial partnership with soloist Amalia Hall.

Hall’s spirited performance invested this distinctly second-tier score with precious vitality. She ensured that awkward patches flowed and worked hard to invest the opening F major scale of its Adagio molto with a lyricism that it didn’t deserve.

The violinist was generous with encores. After a strenuously virtuosic La Cumparsita turned into a tango tangle, a Bach Gavotte offered more relaxed dancing, signing off with a flurry of scrumptious ornamentation.

The concert had opened with a double Viennese treat: Brahms’ Variations on a Theme by Haydn, a veritable love letter from one composer to another.

Altstaedt had conceived the score as a totality, with each variation clearly characterised. Yet for all the tidiness, I sometimes yearned for Brahms’ surging inner melodies to break free. The lilting Siciliana of its seventh variation was a web of delicious dialogue; the monumental finale burdened with a sense of rigidity.

The rapturous applause for Schubert’s Sixth Symphony - fully deserved on the performance side - reminded me of what an oddity it is, often nicknamed the “Little” alongside the composer’s later “Great” symphony in the same key.

Altstaedt could not have done more to convince me of its status, especially with the Beethovenian jests of its scherzo, but too much twittering cuteness took its toll, along with a limp Andante theme that waited in vain for its composer to let it bloom in ensuing variations.