International Music Festival at the Auckland Town Hall

By HEATH LEES

Despite all the rescheduling caused by last week's horrific events, this festival began as planned on Sunday evening, though Cologne-based cellist Maria Kliegel had been diverted on to three different flights and spent 56 hours getting here.

The fact that she came on stage to play at all was impressive; that her playing was so cogent and focused was amazing.

The cello sound seemed small to begin with - silky rather than clearly etched - but gradually she picked up weight and fluency to give Haydn's "other" cello concerto, the D major, an expressive, often virtuosic treatment.

With grave simplicity, she dedicated an elegiac Sarabande by Bach to the American victims; interesting how Bach's musical compassion is so consoling at such times.

But so is Beethoven's overpowering belief in victory over adversity, and the complete music to the drama Egmont was not just a New Zealand first, it also made triumphant sense (with help from Raymond Hawthorne's heroic delivery) of the suddenly fast ending to the overture, normally heard as a stand-alone piece.

Much of the music is of an accompanying nature with lots of echoing phrases, sequences and dominant preparations, and then suddenly the home key reappears and is pressed into place. It's as if you've made ready for a journey, then come home without actually going anywhere.

But the soprano solos were highlights. Maria Keohane's voice seemed less treble-like than we remembered from last year's festival, but it still boasts effortless top B-flats and a constantly radiant tone.

Uwe Grodd, the festival's artistic director, was on the podium, perfectly confident, and the Auckland Philharmonia perfectly responsive. The reduction in strings for Cimarosa's overture to Il Matrimonio Segreto, a show-stopper in Beethoven's young Vienna days, made for some queasy moments, but there was sparkle by the end.

On Monday's programme by the Auer Quartet, Beethoven was again a major item, but since the festival theme is "Beethoven's time", there were a few more of his contemporaries around too.

Haydn reappeared in the fourth of his Op.20 quartets - regrettably overlooked by most performers, who assume that he only mastered the medium by his Op.33 set.

That notion was certainly destroyed in the Auer Quartet's full-blooded "storm and stress" approach, with exciting, gypsy-led third and fourth movements that reminded us that Haydn was really more Hungarian than Viennese.

Both the Mozart and Beethoven quartets lost some of their elegance in these young players' highly charged performances, but their musical feeling was undeniable, and the Schubert Quartettsatz, though fast, was full of imaginative light and shade.

The festival continues tonight.