Scheduling Honegger's King David twice within six years might seem wilful programming to some, and it must be admitted that in 2002, Auckland Choral put the oratorio in the more aptly Gallic company of works by Faure and Vierne.
On Saturday, AC's new director, Uwe Grodd, played it
safe for the first half of the evening. The Bruckner E minor Mass promised earlier in the year did not eventuate. Instead, after John Wells had dispensed Bach's D minor Toccata and Fugue with his customary elan, we had two Bruckner motets, revealing singers alert to the composer's almost sculptural use of his choral forces.
Handel's The King Shall Rejoice needed more than organ accompaniment and energies too often dissipated, most woefully with mid-fugue flusters.
King David is a problematic work as its composer admitted. Yet it would be difficult to imagine a narration more coolly effective than Raymond Hawthorne's.
If Anne Lamont-Low's Witch of Endor seemed more peeved Fendalton matron than Old Testament Cassandra, the Christchurch mezzo did offer the best singing of the evening.
With phrasing never less than immaculate, she was radiant in her Lament of Gilboa and almost made one accept the opening Song of David the Shepherd not being sung by a treble.
Anna Cors and John Murray attended to the rest of the solos. Cors has a warm, attractive sheen to her voice but words struggled to come across.
From his first, tentative In the Lord I put my faith, Murray seemed altogether less happy, lacking the very French nuancing needed.
Grodd's choir entered into the drama of it all, although the tongue-twisting Song of Victory proved a scramble.
The singers seemed most confident in the bold unisons of Psalms of Penitence, one of the composer's own favourite sections, or breaking out in chorale textures on the home straight, running into the closing Alleluias.
When orchestral backings for choral performances are so often disappointing, Grodd's chamber orchestra of predominantly wind and brass players invested Honegger's fanfares, marches and sophisticated musical back-drops with just the right je ne sais quoi.
