The Auckland Chamber Orchestra The End of Time

By WILLIAM DART

The Auckland Chamber Orchestra presented a concert with a difference on Sunday evening as conductor Peter Scholes relinquished his baton and headed a programme of trio and quartet music.

Scholes certainly lifted Beethoven's less-than-startling Gassenhauer Trio. With the tasty blend of his clarinet and James Tennant's cello alongside Katherine Austin's resolute piano, the camaraderie of the first movement was infectious.

Later, the clarinet brought a rustic jolliness to the final variations - lederhosen slapping and a furtive yodel might not have been out of place.

John Psathas' Three Island Songs was exhilarating, with an appropriately unbridled Finale (Psathas marks it "with extreme energy").

Scholes waxed Arabic-style with wailing pitch-bends, while his colleagues remained unfazed by the composer's virtuosic demands.

After the interval Dimitri Atanassov joined the group for Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time, the work that gave the concert its title.

Written in a concentration camp in 1940, this Quartet is one of the greatest testaments to the contemplative power of the art. It is a score that, in taking its time, creates a real sense of rapture, particularly in the two hymns for cello and violin and the clarinet's Abyss of the Birds.

It was here that Scholes was the exemplary soloist. Messiaen's birds sang their hearts out, and when the occasional note seemed reluctant to come forth, it appeared a deliberate and dramatic ploy.

There were also moments of terrifying anger, especially in the precipitous unisons of Dance of Fury for Seven Trumpets and in the latter stages of the seventh movement, where Messiaen hands out fiery swords and turbulent stars.

In his final hymn praising the immortality of Jesus, Atanassov opted for a moderate tempo and the partnership with Austin was a soulful one.

If his line wavered alarmingly towards the end, it was understandable after the intense emotional journey of the previous 45 minutes.

Presented under the umbrella of AK03, this concert drew one of the youngest audiences I have seen outside of campus events. One hopes that all present found the spiritual sustenance that was so generously offered.

Where: Auckland Town Hall Concert Chamber