Aotea Centre, April 14
Review: Heath Lees
With an early start, lots of young people dotted around the audience, and a fashionable regrouping of the strings onstage, the NZSO opened its first Auckland concert of the season with Benjamin Britten's The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra.
Teaching pieces that feature orchestral instruments in turn are usually very boring and vanish without trace after one hearing. Britten's piece has lasted so long because it is superbly written to show off the instruments, and because its variations on Purcell's theme are so resourceful.
Ian Fraser emerged from his still-fresh Chief Executive's office to be the narrator.
Wisely, he avoided sounding too much like Andre Previn, and even managed to update a few comments in the work's badly-worn script.
The closing fugue was too fast for a proper sense of cumulative momentum, and sudden drop-outs in the ensemble meant that flutes were sometimes offside with double-basses, while brass entries arrived unready and un-regal.
"The cellos really do sing," said Fraser in anticipation. Alas, the dry acoustic of the Aotea Centre meant that they could only play.
James Judd's expressively moulded yet musically clear conducting style was on full display in Vaughan Williams' seductive The Lark Ascending while Wilma Smith, the orchestra's leader, gave a warm and gracious reading of the solo violin part in music that sounds continuously beautiful even if its direction is obscure.
Another speeding offence happened in the first movement of the evening's main work - Holst's famous suite The Planets.
Instead of might and menace, the god of war was caught out of breath occasionally, and resorted to some fast but hollow bluster.
On the other hand, the harmony of Venus and the grandeur of Jupiter were high points in a performance that was determined to be vigorous, colourful and dynamic.
Its most magical moment was in the long, slow fade at the end, where the wordless human voices circled outwards to eternity.
<i>Performance:</i> New Zealand Symphony Orchestra
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