AK09 review: American Songs, APO at the Auckland Town Hall

It was sad to see so many empty seats when the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra launched this year's Auckland Festival on Thursday with its American Songs concert.

The apathy shown by the city's concert-going community to such a vigorous and invigorating piece of programming is a cause for worry.

Perhaps the orchestra's advertising, particularly on commercial radio, put too much stress on the blare and spectacle of Duke Ellington's Harlem; maybe the event's selling point should been the more reflective pleasures of the Barber and Adams songs, which, after all, gave the concert its title.

John Corigliano's Promenade Overture certainly set a celebratory mood with the players assembling from all corners of the hall, instruments already engaged, to join the fray. And this was the score at its best, with Corigliano concocting his own fetching Ivesian jumble.

Merlyn Quaife showed a keen response to Samuel Barber's Knoxville: Summer of 1915. The Australian soprano and the orchestra, under Eckehard Stier, caught the dream-like flow of this lovely piece, complementing the perfect blend of Barber's music and James Agee's boyhood memories.

Quaife conveyed the import of each image as it passed while Stier created evocative musical back-drops behind her.

John Adams' The Wound Dresser is a heartfelt setting of some Walt Whitman battlefield verse and had poignant reverberations during the Aids epidemic when it was premiered in 1989; 20 years on, it is no less relevant or moving.

Nathaniel Webster was a sensitive, clear-voiced soloist, with nothing of the baritone bluster that could coarsen the piece.

Whitman's words and Adams' setting of them were clearly paramount for him and the orchestra respected his focus with some of the most expressive playing of the evening.

After interval, Quaife and Webster shared duties on Aaron Copland's Old American Songs. These had character and style. Quaife never let the canter get cute in The Little Horses and Webster gleefully tossed himself into the swing of I Bought Me a Cat.

However, communication would have been greatly increased if there had not been scores between singers and audience.

There was a real buzz in seeing such a well-packed stage for Ellington's Harlem, as there was basking in the wall of rhythm when the joint started jumping.

Effervescent solos from guest jazzmen, starting with trumpeter Mike Booth, along with Stier and his orchestra, were enthusiastic above and beyond the call of crossover and brought the concert to a rousing close.