At the other end of the concert, Leonie Holmes' The Journey, an effectively written 2005 commission for Manukau Symphony, brought the concert to a resounding close.
Earlier, Holmes' through coiled stillness revealed a more investigative composer. Writing for the University of Auckland chamber choir, she had created a clustered melange of childhood forest memories, tinctured with subtle touches of percussion.
After Holmes' few minutes of enchantment, Dorothy Buchanan's dated Song for the Year of the Child did its job of spreading feel-good cheer, while sidestepping musical complexities.
Buchanan's banalities were followed by Monika Broecking's conservative setting of Psalm 150, trailing a rather unconvincing style trip from Palestrina to Gershwin.
Symphonically, the concert tended towards the light side. Cecile Chaminade's elegant 1902 Flute Concertino was once described as "a nicely orchestrated confection", but a true Gallic grace and whimsy tested soloist Adrianna Lis and the orchestra. This music needed to flutter and soar like the birds and butterflies in the composer's popular salon pieces and it didn't.
We were also given two movements of Amy Beach's 1896 Gaelic Symphony, a work that is deep and perhaps irretrievably in the shadow of Dvorak's New World Symphony.
Alison Dunlop's oboe set off a lulling siciliana in its second movement, although later semiquaver scamperings challenged the strings somewhat.
Paczian, to her credit, did achieve a sense of cohesion in Beach's sprawling Lento, with musicianly solos from Mark Bennett and Liliya Arefyuva. But for a work penned in the same year as Mahler's Third, its wonderfulness was not of the first order.
Classical
What: Bach Musica
Where: Baradene Concert Hall
