Review: Manukau Symphony Orchestra at TelstraClear Pacific Events Centre

Manukau Symphony Orchestra has created a very special sense of community in its concerts, a feeling built up over the past 16 years by music director Uwe Grodd and his players.

And there is no denying the buzz of seeing an orchestra in which experienced veterans sit alongside comparative youngsters, some of whom will lead our professional orchestras of tomorrow.

MSO's Saturday Ludwig concert came with a neat Pacific touch to its poster and programme - Beethoven topped with a flamboyant hair styling - as well as first-class soloists in pianist Eugene Albulescu and soprano Morag Atchison.

While Beethoven's Prometheus Overture was more than a little rough around the edges, Albulescu's baton kept up momentum. If the ultimate test of an overture is that it whets the appetite for what is about to come, then Prometheus was a success.

Beethoven's C major Piano Concerto proved a greater challenge. However, after a somewhat dishevelled opening phrase, the orchestra provided a responsive backdrop for Albulescu, who proved an engaging soloist, free from the mannerisms that marred a Beethoven recital he gave some years back.

If the ensemble was tested in the third movement - understandable perhaps when a less-experienced group is conducted by the soloist - the Largo impressed with its sympathetic collegiality.

Atchison held nothing back in the concert aria Ah perfido! and it did not take much stretching of the imagination to see her as the wronged heroine in a classic operatic situation. If her calls for vengeance were occasionally a little shrill in the higher register, elsewhere the soprano's phrasing and tonal modulation were impeccable.

Beethoven's Eighth Symphony fitted in perfectly with Albulescu's avowed intention to present the upbeat side of the composer and what it lacked in tidiness, it almost made up for with gusto.

The precision and humour of Beethoven's metronomic slow movement - intended as a tongue-in-cheek tribute to the ticking machine inventor - left nothing to be desired.