Performance: Something to sing about in 2003

By WILLIAM DART

This year will go down as the year in which NBR New Zealand Opera flexed its muscles and showed us what it was capable of.

Auckland was given five operas, ranging from a new production of Boris Godunov to the premiere of Michael Williams' The Prodigal Child and Acis and Galatea, the company's well-intentioned attempt to provide something for the back-to-baroquers.

Boris was outstanding, a pinnacle in the history of our operatic endeavour, and it wasn't all because of kingpin Vladimir Matorin in the title role.

The real achievement was accommodating so many first-rate local singers in the cast - from Simon O'Neill, Helen Medlyn and veteran Flora Edwards to newcomer Kristen Darragh.

The democratic initiative of the company's on-the-road Barber of Seville reawakened memories of times when the provinces weren't denied the operatic experience. Better still, The Prodigal Child opened in New Plymouth in the middle of Cruise fever, and went on to triumph at the Christchurch and Auckland festivals.

On the orchestral front, the NZSO continued to bring us those high-class soloists that superior funding can afford, and names like Ilya Gringolts, Peter Donohoe and Lynn Harrell did not disappoint.

The eternally cool Mathias Bamert took everything from Penderecki and Vaughan Williams to Messiaen and Brahms under his baton, while music director James Judd opened the season with the theatrical coup of Beethoven and John Cage concertos on the same programme (without a rapper in sight).

Still, money can't buy everything, and there were letdowns on the NZSO front, ranging from Chris Doig's tight-voiced Wagner to that special celebration of New Zealand composers in May that only Wellington was privileged to see.

All the composers were male, all but one were Wellingtonians, and it was a relief when the Concert FM broadcast revealed that we weren't missing much anyway.

The other disappointment has been the handling of the Douglas Lilburn Prize.

After creating a real sense of momentum as the four finalists had their pieces aired, ending with Michael Norris' brilliant Rays of the Sun, Shards of the Moon, we now have to sit back patiently until February to hear who gets the $10,000 and the commission.

Not so with the Auckland Philharmonia's Michael Hill International Violin Competition, in which 18 semifinalists were whittled down to three prize-winners in a mere week of intensive playing.

Listening to all the competitors play John Rimmer's The Dance of the Sibyl at Queenstown in May, one was struck by just how naturally the AP incorporates the New Zealand composer in its philosophy.

The energetic Rimmer was also responsible for one of the orchestra's two major commissions this season - Transcend, a concerto for orchestra that more than held its own against similar works by Bartok and Ginastera on the same programme.

The other sizeable AP commission was Gillian Whitehead's Alice, a staggering score that easily carried off the Sounz Contemporary Award at the recent Silver Scrolls. Setting the words of Fleur Adcock, Whitehead gave us a woman's life, in all its joys and sorrows, in just over 30 minutes.

Experience counts. Here is a composer who's not afraid to draw on a multitude of music and sounds.

Whitehead twists Sousa marches, launches Beethoven's Choral Symphony in a bird-laden forest and then ends the work with the quiet, inexorable tapping of stones. The landscape is revealed to be every bit as much the protagonist as the humans who inhabit it.

Alice is a major work and one that should be recorded as soon as possible. But the best thing at its premiere in July was experiencing a capacity audience surrendering so readily to every note and syllable.

For 30 minutes Alice the woman was alive, well and enthralling in the Auckland Town Hall, eloquently channelled by that marvellous mezzo, Helen Medlyn.

On the contemporary front, Auckland would be immeasurably poorer without the dedication of 175 East, who introduced us to so much new music this year, including Chris Watson when Gretchen Dunsmore tackled the young Wellington composer's Nacelle concerto. 175 East also provided the core support for the ambitious (09)03 festival which laid out a sumptuous feast of contemporary music during Labour Weekend.

The cheering news is that this alternative voice at last has a toehold in the mainstream.

Chamber Music New Zealand is touring Wellington's Stroma ensemble around the country next year - and Aucklanders can mark May 31 in their diaries if they want to hear Stroma play works by Messiaen, Crumb, Boulez and New Zealander Ross Harris.

Chamber Music New Zealand's season was framed by two superb quartets - the St Lawrence String Quartet, who jolted us with Osvaldo Golijov, and the Quatuor Mosaiques, who created a more restrained rapture with a combination of the First Viennese School and authentic instruments. And next year looks even better ...