Auckland Philharmonia at the Auckland Town Hall

By WILLIAM DART

The Auckland Philharmonia's Proms and Planets concert opened, not with flurries and fanfares, but with an unexpected address by Auckland Mayor Dick Hubbard. In among too much loose chatter of things iconic, Hubbard made some welcome promises. Instead of talking about recreation, arts and culture, we'll be talking about arts, culture and recreation - these are words that many will be checking next year.

A lusty play through Walton's Crown Imperial march seemed to catch just the right celebratory tone, although I was taken aback when conductor Miguel Harth-Bedoya announced that, for this concert, we were "moving from Italy back home to Great Britain". As soft a spot as one might have for Walton, Elgar and Vaughan Williams, surely we're secure in our identity on the other side of the world?

Elgar's Salut d'Amour proved a little too fragile to work with full orchestra, even if young violinist Eugene Lee was an affecting soloist. On the other hand, two of the composer's Pomp and Circumstance marches were rousing and predictable crowd-pleasers.

Eugene Lee's moment of glory came with Vaughan Williams' The Lark Ascending. He revealed a sensitivity to the poetry of a score which, like Elgar's music of this period, has the shadow of World War I hanging over it. From opening to closing cadenza, Vaughan Williams' lines unfurled elegiacally. When Lee diverged from the orchestra's song, his countermelodies entwined effortlessly around those of his colleagues.

After interval, the orchestra's brilliant account of five movements from Holst's The Planets made it doubly tragic that we weren't allowed all seven.

It was sad enough that, with Neptune and Saturn omitted, we were denied the exoticism of the mystic and the serenity of old age. On a musical level, the forced turn-around from Uranus back to Jupiter was brusque and ugly. However, with what we were given, Mars was as bristling in its fury as Venus was seductive, with its shifting tempi and enticing blend of horn and woodwind.

Dimitri Atanassov's solo contributions were lovely, with their nods to Borodin in Venus and Rimsky-Korsakov in Mercury, serving as a trailer for Friday's Cossacks and Cannons concert.