KEY POINTS:
Early this year the young musicians and dancers of Buskaid were described by one critic as having the Royal Albert Hall rocking to Rameau. On Saturday, the young Sowetans took on the more modest challenge of the Auckland Town Hall.
Within a few bars of a sprightly overture
by Chevalier de St George, they had bewitched us. The daintiest flicker of a second theme and exquisitely moulded crescendos revealed the musicianship and artistry that conductor Rosemary Nalden has been nurturing here.
Later, the young players lent a sophisticated tenderness to Grieg's Last Spring and brought earthy gusto to Bartok's Rumanian Dances - programme notes by violist Tiisetso Mashishi having made the important connection between Bartok's folk stylings and Soweto's kwela music.
Solo turns came from two violinists. Both had patches of dodgy intonation but this did not detract from Samson Diamond's wistful take on Saint-Saens' Introduction & Rondo Capriccioso or Simiso Radebe lapping up the kitsch all'Ungarese in Lehar's Hungarian Fantasie. Around him, the ensemble played rubato tag with the aplomb of a professional gypsy band.
The much-anticipated Rameau revealed a perfect match between the Frenchman's snappy, sometimes primitive music and dancing which ran from Balanchine to Michael Jackson, township-style.
It opened with two graceful pas de deux; it ended riotously with the stomp of gumboots deputising for Rameau's kettledrums.
Another audience-winner had Teboho Semela, who had revealed her prowess on flute, violin and the dance floor, taking up a microphone and giving us a bluesy Hoagy Carmichael classic, Georgia on My Mind, with a delicate quintet accompaniment.
The formal part of the concert over, the evening ended with Kwela music which, like the chaconnes so popular in Rameau's time, seemed to spring from a repeated pattern of harmonies.
One surprised by morphing into Pokarekare ana, sung by the rich-voiced, poi-twirling Semela while the final, imaginative arrangement of The Lion Sleeps Tonight, better known to some as "Wimoweh", gave the cellos and basses their chance to shine.
An inspirational event that, no doubt, will work its magic on more audiences when it travels around the North Island over the next 10 days.