Auckland Choral's proud history

Auckland Choral has reason to celebrate this weekend, having reached the grand old age of 150. It's hard to believe that when Joseph Brown set up his fledgling chorus in 1855, Verdi's La Traviata and Wagner's Lohengrin were the hot tickets on the operatic stage.

Peter Watts, AC's music director, admires those Victorians who "formed a group of singers as soon as they got off the boats. That's one of the reasons Auckland Choral has always had such a strong social basis.

"This is the Everyman choir, which is what the English choral societies were - the choir for the man in the street. You were there to make glorious music as glorious as you could with mixed resources and not necessarily with highly skilled musicians.

"That's one of the joys of choral music - the whole is greater than the sum of the parts".

Like Ray Wilson and Georg Tintner before him, Watts has proved himself an adventurous programmer. Lately we have had Honegger's King David and Prokofiev's Alexander Nevsky and he was involved with a brave presentation of Bernstein's Mass in 1988.

"It's all a matter of what people will come to, what you can afford, and works that will stretch the choir's boundaries," Watts says. He keeps an eye on what is being done overseas, both new works and older pieces returning to prominence.

On the local composing front, Watts has commissioned David Hamilton's Missa Pacifica for later this year.

What he looks for in a composer is "someone with a proven record of working with words - Leonie Holmes, for example, is a composer who chooses some very interesting texts".

Auckland Choral must watch its budget scrupulously and have the courage to make firm decisions.

"It may cost an arm and a leg to stage the Verdi Requiem in the Town Hall with the Auckland Philharmonia but you know people will come to it," Watts says.

The annual Messiah is assured of "an audience that loves the Messiah and we can tap into that whole thing, using it financially and artistically".

He remembers an ill Noel Mangin in his last Messiah a few years back. "He was a sick man and felt a tremendous sense of comfort and ease singing another Messiah ."

There are too many stories to accommodate, although Watts is keen to pay tribute to Kenneth Cornish, AC's chairman and the Mr Reliable of tenors.

He is looking forward to working once more with Dame Malvina Major and Sir Donald McIntyre in Sunday's Te Deum and the familiar voices of Patricia Wright, Helen Medlyn, Patrick Power and McIntyre in Saturday's Missa Solemnis.

The stories of yore are being collected by Adrienne Simpson for her Hallelujahs and History: A History of Auckland Choral 1855-2005, which will reveal some tasty tidbits of colonial - and post-colonial - carry-on.

The Wellington writer has related minor controversies over Brahms in the 1870s and phenomenally popular wharfshed performances in 1911, but we'll have to wait until November for the full story.

* What: Auckland Choral, Beethoven's Missa Solemnis
* Where and when: Auckland Town Hall, Sat Apr 16, 7.30pm
* What: Auckland Choral, Berlioz' Te Deum
* Where and when: Auckland Town Hall, Sun Apr 17, 3pm