Auckland Philharmonia at Auckland Town Hall

Reviewed by WILLIAM DART

After an unpromising launch with Mendelssohn's Fair Melusine Overture, allotted a scrappy, unfocused performance by the Auckland Philharmonia, Australian cellist Li Wei saved the night last Thursday with a glorious reading of Elgar's Cello Concerto.

Some orchestral roughness had lingered from the Mendelssohn but, to be fair, players and conductor Marco Zuccarini must have found it challenging to follow Li-Wei's occasionally extravagant fluctuations in pace, especially in the Adagio.

It was here that the cellist's deep emotional involvement with the score was most evident, penetrating to its very depths against a backdrop of strings and foreboding clarinets.

Even in the first movement, the merest hint of a cadenza was seized by Li-Wei as a licence for loosening the tempo. This, combined with reserved dynamics and artfully softened rhythms, might have made the Moderato perplexing, had it not been for the ceaselessly gorgeous tone of its soloist.

Zuccarini's hand was heard in the fastish tempos, particularly in the third movement, lending this fiercely anti-war piece an irony more in keeping with the later Shostakovich.

Li-Wei responded to his enthusiastic audience with a graceful account of the Prelude from Bach's G major Cello Suite.

These Dark Hands is the first offering by the Auckland Philharmonia's young resident composer Dylan Lardelli, a dense and serious work in keeping with what Lardelli describes as the careful and poised motion of the original haiku.

Intense textures, alas, sometimes exposed more than one wanted to hear from the orchestral ranks.

Although These Dark Hands lacked the translucence and inner mystery of the composer's chamber works and may have been overly static on a cursory listening, there is vibrant life in its rich inner rhythms and thematic intertwinings.

Shostakovich's Ninth Symphony ended the evening and was a disappointment. Underneath its jaunty exterior, this is one of the composer's most biting pieces of satire, much of it dampened by raw playing from the first violins.

None of the solos had the composure and tonal control of Jane Kircher's bassoon and, sin of sins, the Moderato wallowed at more than eight minutes when the satire would have been sharper with a few minutes shaved off.