Angela Brown with the Auckland Philharmonia at the Aotea Centre

Angela Brown

Is there a more vivacious overture than Rossini's La Gazza Ladra? I think not, and it could have been a spritzig launch for the Auckland Philharmonia's Thursday concert.

Jenny Raven and Lenny Sakofsky's stereo drum rolls, with one instrument on either side of the orchestra, were promising.

Signor Rossini strutted pleasantly for a while, but conductor Marc Taddei was too cautious in his tempo for the Allegro, violins were simply delivering notes, and solos for horn and piccolo caught the players off-guard.

American soprano Angela Brown sure can work an audience, projecting an aura that manages at the same time to be regal and sassy.

Even in the orchestral interludes of Strauss' Four Last Songs, she gave the impression that the music was flowing through her, and she picked just the right moment in September to open her arms and surrender to Straussian rapture.

We were indeed privileged to hear these settings sung with the sort of voice that is built to ride over a big orchestra, even if Brown's vibrato does need checking. Occasionally, a sense of rhythmic looseness also came through, especially in the opening of Beim Schlafengehen.

The best came last, in Im Abendrot, as Brown cast her luscious line over the orchestra at its best, benefiting, as elsewhere, from tempi that did not get waylaid in too much self-reflection.

After interval, the orchestra's mettle was tested in Prokofiev's huge Fifth Symphony, a problematic work, and far from "a symphony of the grandeur of the human spirit", as Prokofiev once described it.

The Aotea acoustic took its toll, with too much woodwind and brass detail smothered by foreground strings.

Nevertheless, Taddei teased the malign from the would-be heroic, making much of the animato figure first heard from strings and wind.

The second movement, a glistening metallic scherzo, was delivered as it should be.

Nimble-fingered violins gave the musical impression of scampering along a hot pavement in bare feet.

Taddei balanced the lyrical and disillusion in the Adagio and by the Finale, with its devil-may-care momentum and full-on satire, any suggestions of poseur heroism had been thoroughly deflated.