Performance: Auckland Philharmonia

Town Hall

Review: Heath Lees


No one basks in 19th-century musical nostalgia more than the Viennese. But you can forgive them that when you remember how much music the city can boast - Beethoven, Mozart, Brahms, the waltz-kings of the Strauss family and the rich and varied folk-music that arrived with the boat-people of the Danube to wash into the concert-halls, cafes and open-air dance spaces of the re-built city centre.

Starting a celebration of musical Vienna with Schubert, the most genuinely Viennese of them all, is always a good idea, and the Rosamunde overture set the tone - tuneful, toe-tapping music that danced along beautifully after the obligatory solemn introduction.

Another solemn introduction appeared from Dame Malvina Major, beginning her contributions with Mozart's divine but soul-searching aria Porgi Amor .

Using her upper, creamy register to the full, she gently reflected on the disappointments love can bring. Disappointingly, the orchestra ignored Mozart's rich nuances and stuck to a disinterested, almost casual accompaniment.

The sudden drop in orchestral temperature carried over into more Schubert Rosamunde music, now with some sluggish tempi changes, and queasy intonation from the woodwind.

This insecurity then transferred itself to the soloist, who sang a fast but increasingly fragile Non mi dir with unusual edge and inaccuracy of note, so that one thought less of relaxing in Vienna in the sun and more of landing in Wellington in the wind.

All was forgiven in the second half, when the more familiar material arrived in the form of Strauss's Fledermaus overture - nicely run-in from the orchestra's recent season with the opera - and the evergreen Tales from the Vienna Woods upon which conductor Werner Andreas Albert tried, with intermittent success, to graft some authentic Viennese rubato.

Completely at ease again, Malvina Major's selections by Strauss and Lehar had a warm, musical lilt and some top notes that thrilled us all.

This Rudd Watts and Stone concert was everything one expected, though a few well-considered introductions might have loosened it up more.