Auckland Chamber Orchestra at the Town Hall Concert Chamber

By WILLIAM DART


Seasonal spirits were flowing in the Auckland Chamber Orchestra's final concert for 2003. Chairman Frank Olsson burst into We wish you a merry Christmas at the end of his interval speech, Peter Scholes' clarinet cunningly threaded the same tune into a cadenza a little later, and the strings set the evening off with Corelli's Christmas Concerto.

Leader Dimitri Atanassov gave Corelli a purposeful stride with a full, rich string sound that would be only slightly compromised later in the concerto. The penultimate Allegro, in particular, simply needed more tonal finesse.

The symphony was Haydn's 66th, a short work bustling with bonhomie, which Scholes conducted with appropriate brio. Haydn's punishingly high tessitura took the two horns a little beyond the bounds of bonhomie here and there, but the orchestra clearly appreciated the balance of humour and grace in the work.

Scholes took up his clarinet for Weber's F minor Concerto and dazzled us. Baermann's first movement cadenza was breathtaking, as were the scampering semiquaver passages of the Finale, a strange little piece that can't decide whether it is a polka or a gallop.

And in the Adagio Scholes moved through the orchestral ranks to play alongside the three horns in the imaginative quartet that Weber wrote for them.

For his encore Scholes played the Finale from Carl Stamitz's E flat Concerto on a replica of an 1800 clarinet. It was a romp to remember, with enough lusty tonic harmonies to service a few gallons of gin.

Sam Hunt was the star turn, reading his poetry alongside Anthony Ritchie's music in Coming To It. Hunt went for it, on cue, and laid out his very personal world in his own inimitable way. Ritchie's score, when it wasn't trying to be well-mannered film music, created frissons when cabbage trees shook their heads and blankets of fog lifted.

Hunt offered an encore, too, relishing the rhetoric of a translated Hungarian poem while Scholes dashed off Magyar melismas on his clarinet and coaxed a handful of players along on an unexpected group improv session. The perfect Christmas gift to the orchestra's loyal subscribers.