Performance: Auckland Philharmonia

Town Hall

Review: Heath Lees


There were as many words as notes to this programme. Pushing back the usual concert boundaries, conductor Miguel Harth-Bedoya gave us a musical preview of Mahler's Song of the Earth.

Linking various excerpts in his engaging way, he created a series of handholds to the vast face of this massive work, inviting everyone to share the emotional journey of music that clearly means an enormous amount to him.

Infected by his commitment and primed by his insights, the audience returned after the interval to find the complete performance of all 66 minutes of Mahler's song-symphony as intense and moving an experience as they had been promised.

Helen Medlyn and David Hamilton sang their arduous yet skilful way through Mahler's mystical journey, though the orchestral weight did not favour Hamilton, whose tenor voice, lovely at times, was often lost in the mix.

But Medlyn excelled, now soaring above the musical firmament, now hushed and seemingly lifeless in the face of the void. Her first contribution in The Lonely One in Autumn ignited an intensity of expression that gradually lit up the whole performance, while her later, hauntingly sad duet with Christine Mori's songful flute was ravishing.

Steering their fragile way between joy and terror, life and death, the strings became alternately lush and shadowy, the solo instruments caught the magic of the occasion, and the soft ending felt like a mighty benediction.

Earlier, more words had fronted the concert, with Gareth Farr introducing his new piece, Beowulf, as the "sheer terror of Beowulf's fight with the underwater monster."

Unlike Mahler, Farr rarely lets up from the loud, full-on, driving sound that he virtually invented and has now mastered.

It's a shame that the strings seem so redundant under the pressure of the brass and percussion, but the momentary lulls gave them a different voice and suggest that Farr may have a few new paths in mind.

Clearly, he is too resourceful a composer to stay in the same musical place for long.