Auckland Choral at the Auckland Town Hall

It would be difficult to imagine December without Auckland Choral's annual Messiah and this year's must go down as one of the most successful.

Once again it was in the hands of the choir's musical director Peter Watts, who also contributed some telling harpsichord continuo during solo recitatives and arias.

When the Adagio tag on the end of the Overture was almost assimilated back into the preceding Allegro, one suspected that tempi were going to be on the spry side and they were.

But it was not just a matter of speed; Watts knows how to shape this work, how to build up a sense of expectancy in the first half and sustain the spiritual affirmation of the final quarter-hour.

Auckland Choral, singing the more celebrated choruses - including a bouncing And the glory without scores - was confident and mostly assured. Only occasionally, in Behold the Lamb of God and some of the later numbers, did energies diffuse.

Tenor Brendon Mercer was the first soloist, in a well-turned Comfort ye my people presented with a bare minimum of ornamentation. Indeed, just a few bars into the work, when many seize the opportunity to wax florid, Mercer held back, allowing us to taste the beauty of an uncluttered line.

Mezzo Shelagh Molyneux was a joy throughout, utterly superb in He was despised, with perfectly gauged ornamentation and a spirited middle section.

If this had been a theatrical presentation, one might have used the word "miscast" for Deborah Wai Kapohe. The soprano's recitatives had little sense of narrative to them and, while earlier airs such as Rejoice, greatly, O daughter of Zion bubbled along merrily enough, I know that my Redeemer liveth lacked a sense of spiritual involvement.

But what a pleasure it was to enjoy a full bass register in Rodney Macann's contributions, beginning with the dramatic recitative of Thus saith the Lord and carrying through to an exultant The trumpet shall sound.

On the instrumental side Pipers Sinfonia, the occasional exposed violin lines aside, was reliable enough, with striking contributions from trumpeter Philip Lloyd, while organist James Tibbles coaxed some intriguingly liquid tones from the town hall organ in For unto us a child is born.