The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra at the Auckland Town Hall

By WILLIAM DART

The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra's weekend of Mozart and Mahler sets off on Friday night with a gem: Mozart's "Little" G minor symphony of K.183. With James Judd at the helm, it is more a matter of scurry and swagger than the required storm and stress, although the weave of wind and strings in the second movement is bewitching.

Soprano Ana James acquits herself creditably in Mozart's Exsultate Jubilate. True, low notes could have had a mite more projection and a few trills tightened a notch or two but James, singing without a score, treats it as the operatic turn it is, complete with a spirited and dramatic recitative.

There was more drama to come. After interval, Judd emphasises the work's essential irony of Mahler's Fourth Symphony - a serenity that is, to quote its composer, "oddly frightening". The sentimental glissandi are restrained and the pacing is impulsive and unpredictable, taking all before it until that headlong hurtle towards the final cadence almost 20 minutes later.

An intrepid Wilma Smith revels in her folkish fiddling and fires pizzicati like bullets in the second movement while Judd expertly guides the lingering Adagio of the third from pensive lyricism to exultant outburst. In the Finale, James does her best to follow Mahler's stipulation that it should be sung with childlike and serene expression, absolutely without parody and, in doing so, fails to give it due weight and conviction.

On Saturday the vast canvas of the Third Symphony is stretched out before us; this was Mahler's attempt to construct a world with all the tools available and it's a veritable universe that is opened up before us.

This is a more carefully navigated journey than Friday's Fourth - Judd winds through the massive first movement, taking note of every subtlety and shading. The almost cinematic cuts from style to style in the second movement dazzle, the offstage posthorn solo in the third reaffirms itself as one of the great romantic moments in the orchestral repertoire.

For all the orchestral splendour, however, the evening belongs to mezzo Helen Medlyn. Clad in a glittering gown that seems to be created from all the stars in heaven, Medlyn is the star supreme.

Gloriously voiced, she does not sink into self-pity for Nietzsche's world-weary lament and her resolute responses to the women's chorus in the fifth movement play their part in ushering in the inevitable and inspirational final movement.