Ute Lemper at the Auckland Town Hall

Reviewed by GRAHAM REID

The necessary reward for enduring 20 minutes queuing in the rain, to get a parking chit from a machine that didn't take notes, was German songstress Ute Lemper, who delivered a 90-minute sold-out show of such daring and emotional engagement it flew by like a single performance piece.

On disc, Lemper's music - which favours the songs of Weill, Brecht, Brel, Piaf and Dietrich - has sometimes felt remote and impersonal. But in concert, where songs are choreographed with interpretive nuance and linked by amusing or informative narratives, it becomes engrossing.

In a bracket of lyrics in German, Russian, Hungarian, Yiddish and Arabic, her audience was as attentive as when she sang (as she did for about half the programme) in the common tongue of English.

You could understand them from the emotion she poured into each piece and the wave of a long arm in the spotlight.

A striking presence in a slinky black dress with an open back to reveal her toned torso, Lemper brought theatrical dramatics to each song: the scathing sneer in Hollander's Munchhausen ("liar, liar"); vamping raunchiness as she played Dietrich's Blue Angel; the doom-laden whiskey swigging of Weill and Brecht's Alabama Song ...

Lemper's voice is an extraordinary instrument, shifting from the barest whisper to a shriek with the power of a nail gun, with some Sarah Vaughan scat and, in her own emotion-drenched Lena, a touch of Suzanne Vega folk along the way.

Her encore alone reached across styles: a spare, gorgeous interpretation of Brel's Ne Me Quitte Pas and a yearning but rough-edged Surabaya-Johnny.

There were many standouts: Lemper fighting for air in Nick Cave's death ballad Little Water Song; her story in song as she explored the ghosts of old Berlin; the adaptation of a poem by the dark, drunken visionary poet Charles Bukowski ...

Lemper said she would take her audience on a journey, but she did more.

With her musically flexible quartet she embarked on an adventure through some of the darker parts of the 20th century and made them relevant today.

An exceptional programme of humane songs by one who could perform and interpret them from within in the manner of an actress. A rare and rewarding night.