William Dart review: New Zealand Opera's Call of the Huia

Oliver Sewell, Wade Kernot and Catrin Johnsson at the Christchurch performance of New Zealand Opera's Call of the Huia. Photo / Suppled

Back in 1995, when asked by TV3 about singing homegrown music, Dame Kiri Te Kanawa claimed that we didn't really have a wealth of composers, apart from a little Māori song or two.

New Zealand Opera's Call of the Huia would have been the perfect response 27 years ago - a concert of 19 New Zealand songs dating from 1876 to 1950, unearthed by Michael Vinten during his Lilburn Trust Fellowship.

Tonight, Vinten was an affable MC, with informative and often witty introductions to music sung by Oliver Sewell, Catrin Johnsson and Wade Kernot, with David Kelly at the piano.

A set of drawing room ballads, mostly sentimental, had one unexpectedly locking into today's political issues. Alice Mackay's "Te Whenua Kura", a lament for lost tribal lands, was persuasively delivered by Kernot.

Gordon McBeth's prize-winning "All on a Summer's Day" revealed the solid musical skills of a composer who mentored the young Douglas Lilburn. This immaculately tailored piece of writing benefited from the exquisite weave of Kelly's piano and Sewell's clear, fresh tenor.

As songs passed by, one thought of the frustrations experienced by many of their composers in our unsympathetic cultural clime, especially the three who fled Nazi Germany. Georg Tintner, Richard Fuchs and Paul Schramm all struggled with a curiously Kiwi brand of xenophobia and discrimination.

Their sophisticated music, to poets like Hesse and Heine, tested the singers, with Kernot evoking the world of Kurt Weill in Schramm's compellingly grim "Marschlied".

An evening of fairly serious fare brightened up in the final bracket. Sewell's playful portrayal of Spanish street flirtations in John Maughan Barnett's "My Lady Passes" drew a spontaneous outburst of applause.

Johnsson received the same, reining in her formidable vocal power, for a more intimate, cabaret-style "You're Nice". This devastatingly cute little number brought its own memories, being written by Moya Rea who, for my generation, was a familiar and warm figure in the city's concert life.

What: Call of the Huia
Where: Town Hall Concert Chamber
When: Sunday
Reviewer: William Dart