Classical review: Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra Reveries

French maestro Bertrand de Billy transported APO audiences with drive and momentum. Photo / Marco Borggreve

Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra's Reveries was an evening of many enchantments, as French maestro Bertrand de Billy transported us to La Belle France, courtesy of Debussy, Poulenc and Franck.

The programme set off with a musical amuse-bouche — Debussy's flute solo Syrinx, beautifully played by Melanie Lancon, whose swooning lines would then take us, spellbound, into the sylvan glades of Debussy's Prelude a l'Apres-midi d'un faune.

From weaving woodwind dialogues to the ping of antique cymbal, de Billy evoked a world far from our resolutely Edwardian surroundings in the Auckland Town Hall with strings proving that lush and delicate need not be two irreconcilable states.

Poulenc himself would have been totally won over by Benjamin Sheen, the sprightly soloist in the Frenchman's 1938 Organ Concerto. What an endearing musical mix this is, with the melodramatic blast of the organ's opening chords seemingly so far away from passages of exquisitely etched simplicity that highlighted Sheen's fine sense of colour. The strings bustled through their Allegro giocoso with almost impish glee while Steven Logan's booming timpani played jovial referee.

As an encore, Sheen reminded us of the French side of the great Bach, in a crisply articulated Gigue Fugue.

After interval, we were treated to Cesar Franck's D minor Symphony, arguably the finest French symphony ever penned by an organist. This is a juicy piece of writing, unabashedly late romantic in its slippery chromaticisms.

Franck isn't afraid of tub-thumping climaxes, in which one can hear the organist literally pulling out all the stops. And nor was de Billy, coaxing some magnificent walls of orchestral sound from his players.

There was subtlety too, specifically in Martin Lee's gorgeous cor anglais solo and during the whole score, charted through the graceful, often willowy movements of the conductor's left hand.

Debussy admired this 1888 work but was irked by its constant four-bar phrases. Thanks to de Billy's extraordinary sense of drive and momentum, such shortcomings were as nothing.

What: Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra, Reveries
Where: Auckland Town Hall
Reviewer: William Dart