Solid work, classy concerts

By WILLIAM DART

Looking back over the year that almost was, one tries to imagine life without the Auckland Philharmonia. With the NZSO about to be enshrined as a cultural icon and somewhat freed from marketplace pressures, there's no such guarantee being lined up for what must be the country's hardest-working orchestra.

We Aucklanders like to feel it is "our" orchestra, and the players serve their citizens wonderfully, but it has become much more than that. Thanks to Concert FM, most concerts can be heard countrywide, including Julian Lloyd Webber in Philip Glass' Cello Concerto, not so long after the work's Beijing premiere, and the spectacular first performance of Europa, John Rimmer's Concerto for Brass Band and Orchestra.

Like the city of New York, you wonder if this orchestra ever sleeps. It's as busy in the pit as it is on the stage, not to mention everything from Composers workshops to Baby Proms.

The Philharmonia knows its audience. I am impressed by its ability, in the final Spring series, to fill a town hall with what seems like a totally different audience from those who attended its main concert series.

Hats off, too, for the way programmes with titles like Gypsy Fire and Viennese Sweets manage to have substance - although I do think that someone should have coaxed Dame Malvina Major to show her yodelling prowess between the Strauss and Lehar.

We would be poorer, too, without the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, whose budget allows for premier soloists like Vadim Repin and Stephen Kovacevic, and it's good to see the NZSO giving some space to New Zealand music, with the mammoth sound sculpture that was Penny Axtens' from the sixth hour, and the ethno-lounge flirtations of Jack Body's Carmen Dances.

NBR New Zealand Opera played it safe with Mozart and Bizet, although The Marriage of Figaro was elegantly wrenched into the halls of haute couture, and played out on John Parker's chic chrome-and-mirrors set.

Most pleasing was that this cast was almost totally homegrown. Even more pleasing was the quality of the singing and that young singers like Andrea Creighton, Sarah Castle and Katherine Wiles know how to work a stage. And what I wouldn't give to have a CD of Craig Sengelow's outrageous Mozart "mix" that served as curtain call music.

In April, Auckland University mounted John Rimmer and Witi Ihimaera's Galileo, a solid work of clarity and beauty with resonances for us. Its meld of the visual, electronic and acoustic was the closest one might get to an operatic Holy Trinity.

It's been a productive year for Rimmer with this and the spectacular Brass Band Concerto and several shorter pieces. Doubtless the residency with the Philharmonia has played its part, and I believe this is an area that with Government investment could reap rewards.

Young talent contributes so much to our cultural life. Over just 10 days, Benjamin Zander and the NZSO National Youth Orchestra wowed us with Charles Ives' Three Places in New England; four Christchurch youngsters opened Chamber Music New Zealand's School Music Contest finals, with George Crumb at his most colourful, and the hundreds of young choristers in the Big Sing final offered everything from throat singing to Renaissance madrigals.

Chamber Music New Zealand's concert series was one of its classiest for years, with Il Giardino Armonica's stylish Baroque night and the New Zealand String Quartet enchanting us with Webern's Langsamer Satz.

The highlight was the Tokyo Quartet playing Schubert and Dvorak. Some friends grumbled about why we couldn't have had Wellington's Beethoven and Janacek programme and I suggested they stay home the next evening and turn on Concert FM at 8.

A handful of performances stand out. Terence Maskell's Graduate Choir sang rings around most of the other choristers at Peter Godfrey's birthday bash, ranging from exquisite Parry, Debussy to some frisky Villa-Lobos and, in the hit of the afternoon, standing in a circle around the chuffed octogenarian, "You will never grow old".

On the contemporary side, I wish more people had been at 175 East's first concert when clarinettist Gretchen Dunsmore and pianist Lynda Cochrane went winningly wild in Peter Maxwell Davies' Hymnos.

I felt privileged a few weeks later to experience soprano Glenese Blake and her young instrumentalists cut to the heart of Gillian Whitehead's Out of this Nettle, Danger.

The best news has been the flourishing of local CDs, at times in too great a quantity to cover. The range is prodigious, but I have picked two from Atoll's Treasure in Sound series: historic concert party performances on Ko Ngati Poneke Hoki Matou along with the sterling TANZA recordings of the 1953 National Band of New Zealand.

While concerts lie in the memory, these albums won't disappear so easily. So, if you're looking for a pair of treasures for that Christmas stocking ...