Review: APO, Auckland Town Hall

The infallibly poetic Nicolas Altstaedt was at his most stirring in the concerto's slow movement. Photo / Supplied

Thursday's Divine Poetry programme did not prove the same drawcard as Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra's bumper audience for its Gala Opening last week.

Borodin's In the Steppes of Central Asia was an easy opener, even if it is little more than a seven-minute exercise in making one tune go a very long way.

But what's to complain about when Martin Lee's cor anglais makes such magic of it?

Conductor Eckehard Stier and cellist Nicolas Altstaedt were a team to savour in Shostakovich's First Cello Concerto. In the first movement, one could sense the two men gently sparring with subtle shifts of tempo, the orchestral roars cutting across the soloist's insistent, almost nagging theme.

Nicola Baker made the most of her dramatic horn entry; so did Altstaedt soon after, with an unexpectedly but effectively low-key response.

The Soviet sarabande of the slow movement revealed the expressive power of the APO strings with the infallibly poetic Altstaedt at his most stirring in the poignant second theme and the ghostly return of the first.

After a cadenza that did Shostakovich's massive chords full and resonant justice, the cellist took us through to an electrifying Finale.

The Russian writer Boris Pasternak gave us a memorable portrait of Scriabin the composer, creating music that "triumphantly thumbed its nose at everything respectably decrepit and majestically dull"; music that was "insanely, mischievously daring, and free, frivolous and elemental as a fallen angel".

This could have been The Divine Poem that Stier and his musicians gave us. So mesmerising was it in fact, that one wishes a bleeding chunk of the first movement's recapitulation had not been excised, especially when the programme ran a good half-hour shorter than last week's.

For a composer thought in his time to be an ultramodernist, Scriabin gives us exhilarating waltzes, fateful motifs straight out of Tchaikovsky and brilliant birdsong, all of which were thrillingly delivered.

Nor was the Russian afraid to end the work with three pages of triumphant C major which provided a heart-stopping signing-off for the concert.

Review

What: Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra
Where: Auckland Town Hall.