It is rare to find a programme as intriguing as the Auckland Chamber Orchestra's American Connections on Sunday.
Setting off with side-by-side Stravinsky and Copland was clever. The Russian composer's Dumbarton Oaks Concerto, spiking up the Brandenburging Bach, was genially delivered.
Sometimes harmonies seemed a little cloudier than Stravinsky intended,
but Peter Scholes and his musicians did catch the almost conversational banter of the piece.
Dumbarton Oaks was written for the 30th wedding anniversary of a certain Mr and Mrs Bliss; Copland's Nonet was occasioned by the same couple's 50th.
Although the nine string players did not always release Copland's colours at their lustrous best, it was a welcome opportunity to experience a rarely heard work.
Anthony Young's Three Songs on Poems by Jean Toomer, is a major score from this Auckland composer and the highlight of the evening.
Young has a gift with orchestral textures, acknowledging the demands of precision and poetry. The first song, Storm Ending, surges restlessly under a floating, skybound melody. In the last, her lips are copper wire, fragments of melody are framed by curling woodwind solos.
Throughout, Toomer's vivid images inspire just the right colours, such as the saturated string tremolos of Evening Song.
The orchestra was at its best and soprano Claire Nash, while not always the best at communicating text, was a commanding presence.
After interval, Scholes took up his clarinet for Russ Garcia's Five Sketches. In a lightweight work, Garcia easily beguiles us with the sheer inventiveness of his writing, especially in the brittle third movement, which set the brilliant Scholes against the clatter of col legno strings.
The evening ended with high theatrics.
Michael Daugherty's What's that spell is a sly sideswipe at the "Amerikan" way of life. Emma Sloman and Claire Nash were the two Barbiefied divas in ballerina drag; droll, camp and as outrageous as could be.
Nash was the eyelash-fluttering automaton, playing as if Offenbach's Olympia had been dropped off in Kansas; Sloman was the Barbie with heart and soul, making a torch song aria out of the tongue-in-cheek Oh Ken.
Around them, the orchestra had immense fun with Daugherty's musical antics. And we did, too.
