Performance: Auckland Philharmonia (August 31)

Auckland Town Hall

Review: Heath Lees

By the time Schubert's immortal C-major tune arrived in the Rosamunde overture last Thursday, the toe-tapping around the hall was palpable, showing that everyone had relaxed after a surprisingly untidy opening to a familiar piece.

But familiarity is hardly the word for Hovanhess' The Holy City, whose opus 218 number suggests it was relatively late in the composer's 90 years (and still counting).

Surprisingly, the work's harmonic style hardly moves beyond that of say, Vaughan Williams, though its technicolour effects are innocently attractive.

Its solo trumpet lines were arrestingly played on the golden instrument of America's Michael Sachs, who stayed on the platform for a finely polished solo performance in Hummel's E-flat Trumpet Concerto.

It was disappointing that the orchestra was so self-effacing in this work, rarely catching the bite of the rhythms, resorting to a bland tone in the middle movement, and in the gallop of the finale, leaving all the energy and flair up to the soloist.

However, the second half of the concert revealed that they had been saving themselves for Prokofiev's Fifth Symphony, one of the Russian's best compositions, but difficult to bring off in performance.

Under Vladimir Verbitsky's sympathetic direction, the orchestra quickly got inside the music and set up that intensity of performance that makes such a festival out of a live event.

In the first movement, the multi-layered, edgy counterpoint was beautifully controlled, and the brass excelled themselves in one of the best scores they have in the repertoire. (Some people believe the tuba player should be paid double in this work.) The crowning glory was in the third movement which is a world in itself, cutting and skipping from lean, motor-driven chugs to the harsh, military stomp of the jackboot, and every so often clearing to a horizon of compassion and human engagement that makes you feel happy to be alive after all.

The sheer miracle of Soviet engineering that forms an unstoppable crescendo in the finale was powerful stuff too, and made a fine ending to this Royal and SunAlliance concert.