Valentina Peleggi leads NZSO’s stirring Rossini and Kelly Stabat Mater – William Dart

The Voices of New Zealand choir with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra , conductor Valentina Peleggi and soloists: soprano Madison Nonoa, mezzo-soprano Anna Pierard, tenor Filipe Manu and bass Jeremy Kleeman. Photo / New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

The highly anticipated Stabat Mater concert by the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra paired the extremely operatic choral work by Rossini with a new, homegrown commission from Victoria Kelly.

With a magisterial Valentina Peleggi on the podium and an exemplary New Zealand Symphony Orchestra (NZSO), no drama or passion was left unexplored in the Italian composer’s tribute to the grieving mother of Christ.

It was a showcase too for the Voices New Zealand Choir, from the finely sculpted phrases of the opening chorus to a blaze of fugal fury in the closing In sempiterna saecula.

Four vocal soloists play a crucial role here, with arias and ensembles that could well have slipped from or into one of Rossini’s stage works.

Unfortunately, from my seat at the back of the circle, they were seriously underpowered, with too many details lost between stage and auditorium.

Yet a certain nervousness projected by their unaccompanied quartet seemed to increase the explosive impact of the chorus that followed.

There were, however, moments of unalloyed pleasure such as soprano Madison Nonoa’s triumphant top Cs after floating lyrically over the choir in the Inflammatus, or her joining mezzo Anna Pierard in the sweetest of harmonies.

Mezzo-soprano Anna Pierard (from left), conductor Valentina Peleggi, tenor Filipe Manu and bass Jeremy Kleeman. Photo / New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Arias by both tenor Filipe Manu and Australian bass Jeremy Kleeman needed more projection to resound as they should.

The pride of both choir and orchestra was palpable when they gave us Kelly’s Stabat Mater, a 17-minute setting of her own secular text, celebrating “Mary’s power: feminine power and maternal power”.

Kelly wields a potent and evocative palette, opening with a karanga-like combination of singing bowl, oboe and bowed vibraphone; elsewhere, delicate harp notes register with the utmost clarity between sumptuous Panavision climaxes.

Yet underlying Kelly’s rich and referential choral style – she cites a host of influences – her text is brilliantly conveyed.

Here is a composer who knows the almost visceral effect of a shift from minor to major and the strange beauty of traditional harmonies subtly impinged upon by layers of dissonance, a symbol for our troubled times if ever there was.