Nigel Kennedy at the Aotea Centre

By WILLIAM DART

It took two rounds of slow clapping to coax the star on to the stage. The Auckland Philharmonia players entered and Nigel Kennedy nonchalantly strolled in, high-fiving with the front row, slapping the backs of colleagues and claiming that his lateness was because he had to resuscitate a possum.

"Ladies, gentlemen and other types of people" was the greeting and we finally embarked on an evening that was more circus than concert, an event in which musical issues were not the primary ones.

When the English violinist wasn't cracking jokes (including one of hideous coarseness) he was confiding to us that, out of three piles of Vivaldi's concertos, one third was "full of s***".

But this was to be Vivaldi's big night. Kennedy and Cora Venus Lunny sparred entertainingly in their double violin concertos and one felt pride in the snappy support provided by the AP players. Bogumila Gizbert-Studnicka's harpsichord made its voice beautifully felt, while Taro Takeuchi, strumming on baroque guitar and laying down countermelodies on arch-lute, stole the show in the softer moments.

But the silly mannerisms exhausted. There was too much deliberately raw tone - more Psycho shower scene than anything to do with the red-haired priest - and one tired of those manic swells of sound, with Kennedy stomping his feet and lunging at his players like a terrier on a short lead.

Three short duos by Bartok were a mystifying interlude, energetically dashed off by Kennedy and Lunny in a fraction of the time that the aimless gabble around them had taken.

The Four Seasons held few surprises if you have Kennedy's latest EMI recording, although a trio of Spring birdsong from Kennedy, Justine Cormack and Dimitri Atanassov was curiously affecting. Elsewhere, roughness ruled, including some embarrassing interjections of "Oi" in Spring's Finale and Kennedy's playing could be loose to the point of louche. When, come Autumn, Bacchus' cup was duly poured, it sounded as if the violinist had been into the 100 per cent stuff.

By the end of all this, I was screaming for some calmer Corelli and praying for no encores. But a free-ranging take on Jimi Hendrix's Purple Haze, in which Kennedy trotted up the aisle, improvising, chatting (and high-fiving), proved fascinating. Back on stage the AP's Tomislav Nikolic and Miranda Adams contributed the sort of solos that would have earned them star status in Django and Stephane's Hot Club.

Alas, Nige should have stopped while he was ahead. Calling his Malvern mate, British songwriter Caleb Clarke up on stage, Kennedy added Grappelli-trimmings to a ballad of appalling ordinariness. All this passed in three minutes and there was no clamouring for more. A patient but generally content audience had been in the Aotea Centre for three-and-a-half hours and I, for one, wanted to feel those summer breezes unaccompanied by any Vivaldian tremolo.