Performance: Chamber Music NZ

Auckland Town Hall

Review: Tara Werner

Chamber Music New Zealand is one of this country's most enduring musical institutions, and this concert celebrated 50 years of music-making.

Given its support for New Zealand musicians and composers over the years, it was entirely appropriate that a new work by Lyell Cresswell, performed by the New Zealand String Quartet and Michael Houstoun, was the centrepiece of the programme.

And Every Sparkle Shivering may not have been easy music for all concerned but it had a coherence throughout.

Its performance must have posed quite a few difficulties but it was definitely fun.

The piano sometimes sounded a little like a cat scampering over the keyboards while the strings were valiantly trying to keep up in syncopation.

But the music also had a serious intent - Cresswell portraying in music a section from Dante's Divine Comedy.

Five ideas emerged slowly from the sparkling musical mosaic, with a piano chord at the beginning and an upward gesture a pivotal point.

Both Houstoun and the New Zealand String Quartet sounded thoroughly familiar with the score and carried it off with total conviction.

Not so the Schumann Piano Quintet Opus 44, which seemed lacking in its essential romantic spirit.

The opening allegro brillante was somewhat ponderous and uncoordinated.

Although the funeral march was appropriately sombre, it came across as heavy-handed.

The most successful movement came last, with Houstoun and the string quartet finally settling into a lyrical and sensitive interpretation of the allegro ma non troppo.

Meantime, the Mozart String Quartet K590 showed the musicians in disciplined form, with the composer allowing the cello an unusual amount of freedom in the opening allegro moderato.

The andante highlighted a fine sense of ensemble, while the menuetto and finale contained some beautifully played legato passages.

But it was the Cresswell that emerged as the most challenging and stimulating part of this birthday celebration.