Auckland Philharmonia at the Aotea Centre

By TARA WERNER

This concert last Thursday night was as English as the River Thames, and its portrayal of the British landscape and its people would have made any expat quite nostalgic.

Hamilton Harty's orchestral transcription of Handel's Water Music makes an interesting contrast with more familiar renditions of authentic period instruments, and yet his interpretation does not suffer in comparison.

The horns and woodwind have plenty to do, as in Handel's original, and yet the orchestration is never heavy-handed. It is easy to imagine a barge party filled to the brim with 50 instrumentalists heading up the Thames in serenade of George I.

Here the Auckland Philharmonia's horn section played an extrovert account in the opening allegro, and the woodwind and strings were just as polished throughout the suite.

Then a leap into the pastoral, with Vaughan Williams' evocative Oboe Concerto. The opening movement requires a great deal of dexterity from the soloist, who scampers up and down while spinning out a folk-song-like melody.

Australian oboist Diana Doherty seemed to reflect every change of mood with her movements on stage, almost dancing along in some sections.

Despite this distraction, her empathy with the composer was obvious, and a solid string section accompanied her seamless interpretation.

Next, the sort of music that came out in waves in the 1950s, when films of worthy subjects contained scores more British than the British. Doreen Carwithen's Overture for a documentary on the Queen's Coronation could be said to be marginally better than most, heavily influenced by William Walton and Williams.

Nonetheless, this bombastic music paled in comparison with the sheer emotional strength of Benjamin Britten's opera Peter Grimes.

By now it was apparent that American conductor James Sedares had a real empathy for English composers, since he drew out a disciplined and yet powerful performance from the entire orchestra of the famous Passacaglia and Four Sea Interludes.