Town Hall, Sunday
Review: Heath Lees
This was the first concert in a series of six globe-trotting programmes.
On this occasion the choice was Italy, where so much attractive music for small orchestra has been written.
Take Respighi's Ancient Airs and Dances, for example - a seductive collection of 16th-century dance pieces clothed in stylish dress by one of Italy's most successful orchestrators.
The chamber orchestra sounded sonorous and well-prepared. Only towards the end did the impetus weaken, and tuning and tone suffered in the final, highly exposed passacaglia.
Vivaldi has been enthusiastically rediscovered by our age, so it was a pleasure to hear two of his flute concertos, typically programmatic, one taking its cue from The Goldfinch and the other evoking the night.
Amanda Hollins made a welcome return from Sydney, demonstrating her polished and rounded flute tone.
Some problems arose with the small concertino group early in the first concerto, but when this reduced to cello and harpsichord, a shared ensemble returned. There was also some fine duetting in the last movement between flute and the violin of leader Lara Hall.
The Night concerto had Hollins in even better form, but the weight of string tone cast some obscuring shadows over her middle and lower notes. The house lights were lowered for the Sleep movement - a nice touch.
New Zealander Ivan Zagni is of Italian extraction, so his Antarctica dances were both allowable and enjoyable, though the contrapuntal parts were angular and somewhat muddy.
Haydn's 60th symphony, Il Distratto, made a good closing item. Here conductor Peter Scholes drew attractive and well-defined playing from his musicians, and gave us much to enjoy from yet another rarely heard work.
<i>Performance:</i> Auckland Chamber Orchestra
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