Thursday night saw yet another coup for the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra, having Okko Kamu conduct a predominantly Finnish programme in his first appearance with its musicians.
At the Palace Gates, Aulis Sallinen's overture to his opera Palatsin Porteilla was a cute curtain-raiser. Wit and irony bubbled over as
the music bounced from the tongue-in-cheek portentous to infectiously skittish. The players caught every twist under the Finn's deft direction.
It was the turn of the strings in Sibelius's Scene with Cranes. Romantic in tone for the most part, this score still managed a few surprises, with piercing, bird-like calls on clarinets and an unsettling gasp of string harmonics at one point. The finely drawn performance was brought to a close with a mellifluous duet between Dimitri Atanassov and David Garner.
English cellist Richard Harwood seemed a little reserved in Schumann's Cello Concerto, which demanded more fervour than what we heard projected from the town hall stage.
In the first section, there was a fatal sense of caution, brought on perhaps by the composer's "Not too fast" direction.
The central Langsam lingered tellingly over Schumann's inner thoughts, with Harwood's Rugeri cello lending it all the expressiveness that the composer calls for.
Although the up-tempo Finale suffered from scarred intonation, Harwood more than made amends in his encore. There was a marvellous poise in an Allemande from Bach's First Cello Suite, complete with beautifully buoyant ornamentation, whetting the appetite for Harwood's recital tonight with the Australian pianist Caroline Almonte.
After interval, Sibelius's Fifth Symphony took a few pages to settle, thanks to sour horn harmonies and intractable woodwind shading.
However, once the musicians were in their stride, Kamu was unswerving in his pursuit of the composer's inexorable energy force.
After an Allegro moderato which might be construed as a few glances in the direction of the young Bartok, the second movement cut into deeper and darker emotional terrain while the third, with its rousing horn lines, stirred in the best Sibelian manner.
The composer himself described this Finale as "triumphal" and so it was under Kamu, right through to its final sledgehammer chords.
Who: Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra.
Where: Auckland Town Hall.
Reviewer: William Dart.
