Auckland Chamber Orchestra in concert

By TARA WERNER

TOWN HALL CONCERT CHAMBER - As T.S. Eliot says so sagely in his poem Burnt Norton from Four Quartets: "Time present and time past/Are both perhaps present in time future ... "

This concert had more than a little element of Eliot. The Auckland Chamber Orchestra titled the programme Visions of the Future and included two contemporary works - one by John Elmsly, taking as its starting point a section from Burnt Norton. It also highlighted the past, with music from Mozart.

As for the present, whether the orchestra has maintained the performance standard set previously is open to conjecture.

The group needs to have a much better blend and hear each other properly, especially the brass section, which tended to overwhelm the others.

The problem lies in the structure of the orchestra. Musical director Peter Scholes does an excellent job with his innovative programming and steady conducting, but a changing line-up of musicians leads to lack of stability and coordination.

The orchestra was also not helped by a soloist seemingly lacking in confidence in Mozart's Piano Concerto No 21. Marcus McLaren lost his way entirely in several sections of the opening allegro. By the andante the performance was flowing, but there was an inaccurate cadenza in the finale.

There was a tidier account of Mozart's Symphony No 35, although the brass struggled to contain themselves in the finale.

The two contemporary works could not have been more different.

Elmsly's piece for strings, Neither From Nor Towards, was an abstract attempt to achieve the "still point" mentioned in Eliot's poem by bringing fragments of sound and rhythm ultimately together.

Michael Daugherty's Flamingo was an entertaining mishmash that cleverly injected popular culture into the classical orchestra.