Auckland Philharmonia play the Town Hall

By HEATH LEES

AUCKLAND TOWN HALL - "A symphony must be a whole world" Mahler said, and his Third Symphony shows exactly what he meant. Everything about it is vast. Its subject follows the evolution of life, its length demands a complete concert, and its orchestra is super-large.

At the start of Thursday's Royal and SunAlliance concert, even those who expected large numbers were surprised by the sea of instrumentalists on stage.

Waves of string players, banks of woodwind, eight horns (and an extra one for good luck), two sets of tympani, a veritable brass band and, by the second half, mezzo-soprano soloist Helen Medlyn, a boys' choir from St Kentigern College, a women's choir from Viva Voce and the Chapman Tripp Opera Chorus.

If the sight made the Auckland Philharmonia's status as a mere "regional orchestra" seem ludicrous, so did the way it brought the symphony together, since the quality of performance matched the scale of the work superbly.

Occasional nervous touches at the start and tired moments by the end were unsurprising. After a long spoken introduction from conductor Miguel Harth-Bedoya, the opening sense of thrill and anticipation took time to warm up.

The brass found it difficult to judge the deeper layout and, despite their marvellous sounds, there were some ragged moments. Shrinking at first from fast-note entries, the strings missed some of the early energetic surges.

But Harth-Bedoya drew his monstrous forces into a highly coloured, precision-turned ensemble, and by the splendour of the first movement's ending there was fine interpretation at work, which gradually drew out the movement's large-scale horizon of peaks and troughs.

The second part gave every opportunity for Mahler's lucid, chamber-music effects in the woodland scenes, and later, Medlyn's dramatic intensity of tone was ideal for Nietzsche's Midnight Song. Norman McFarlane's offstage post-horn sounded sweet and true, and the slow movement grew mightily into a magnificent ending.