Auckland Chamber Orchestra founding director Peter Scholes. Photo / Supplied
Opinion
Thanks to the unswerving faith of its founding director Peter Scholes, Auckland Chamber Orchestra has earned a special place in the collective heart of our city's music-lovers. It was little surprise, then, that its Sunday Dixtuor concert drew a full and enthusiastic house.
A vigorous bill of fare ranged from
a sprightly Ken Wilson Duo for clarinet and bassoon, dispensed with cool panache by Scholes and Ben Hoadley, to an under-appreciated classic, Schoenberg's 1906 Chamber Symphony.
Wilson was not the sole New Zealand composer tonight. Sarah Ballard's felsic mafic was an evocative piece with geological inspirations, exploring the implications of lava in musical terms.
Eight musicians conveyed Ballard's volatile textures very well indeed. Streaks of irregular scales shifted between wind and string sonorities and, once again, in chordal passages, the composer revealed her special talent for grappling with issues of harmonic density.
After the interval, Luca Manghi directed the same intense focus to a celebrated twentieth-century flute solo, Edgard Varese's Density 21.5. Playing from memory, his superb tonal control and articulation lent the sound an almost physical presence.