Classical Review: APO, Auckland Town Hall

Italian trumpeter Giuliano Sommerhalder stamped his personality on a familiar score.

Performance of Haydn compositions shows off skills of conductor and stand-in trumpet soloist.

With 104 Haydn symphonies to choose from, Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra picked one of the lesser-known specimens to launch its Town Hall concert on Wednesday.

The Austrian's 34th Symphony is uneven in its inspiration - one critic suggested its Finale seemed as if it had been dashed off in an hour before Haydn was due at the copyist.

But young Norwegian conductor Eivind Gullberg Jensen brought a commendable grace and some intensity to its opening Adagio.

Oboes and horns have their big chance in the trio of the third movement and tonight, it proved a marvellous meld of bubbling triplets and rustic syncopations.

The title of the concert, The Trumpet Shall Sound, came not from Handel's Messiah, but from Haydn's solitary concerto for that instrument.

Taking over for an indisposed Tine Thing Helseth, Italian trumpeter Giuliano Sommerhalder certainly stamped his personality on a familiar score.

Taking advantage of a bright-toned E flat instrument, the opening Allegro delighted with some crafty ornamentation and a winning way with a phrase.

Sommerhalder's original cadenza was spectacular, without straying from classical expectations.

The decorative impulse continued through the work, fetchingly so in a lively Andante, in which violins could have done with a little sweetening. We were to have heard a 2013 trumpet concerto by the Danish composer Bent Sorensen, an intriguing score calling for orchestral singing and sandpaper blocks.

Alas, it was not to be, and Jean Francaix's Prelude Sarabande et Gigue was a conservative replacement.

Francaix writes pretty music that, too often, is alarmingly inconsequential. Tonight, the many divergences from the score were mostly accounted for by Sommerhalder hearkening back to the original 1952 version of the work, although there were other moments of awkwardness.

Beethoven's Seventh Symphony must be one of the most reliable of concert-closers. It is difficult to resist the compulsive build-up of its opening pages or being swept away by the propulsive energy of its Vivace and closing Allegro non troppo.

Tonight's performance achieved all of that, although the minor regrets included a patch of rather wan fugato from the strings in the Allegretto.

What: Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra
Where: Auckland Town Hall
When: Wednesday, May 6