Covid footnote to concert favourite
Sunset Symphony, performed by the Trust Waikato Symphony Orchestra; Rhododendron Lawn, Hamilton Gardens; Saturday night. Conductor Rupert D’Cruze and concertmaster Ann Speed, reviewed by Mike Mather
It was not meant to be the soundtrack to the end of the golden weather but there was an unfortunate, unavoidable tinge of sadness to the conclusion of this year’s Sunset Symphony concert.
It was a sense of things lost. Freedom of movement, maybe. Definitely for any Aucklanders in the audience.
The annual concert – a crowdpleasing highlight of the Hamilton Gardens Arts Festival for more than a decade now – attracted, as usual, a huge crowd to the Rhododendron Lawn.
The late summer evening was cool and still. Curtainraisers Brass Attack got proceedings under way with some surprisingly mostly mournful music. It was wonderful.
The orchestra was also great. The sound much less so, with the system that blighted Tami Neilson’s show a week before still muffling the finer, higher notes.
The players did not let that trouble them. They were in fine form and flew through Elmer Bernstein’s theme to The Magnificent Seven; Vangelis’ theme to
Chariots of Fire; and Franz von Supp’s ode to using horses as weapons, the Light Cavalry Overture. The MC for the evening, Brooke Baker, also sang the lyrics to This Is Me from The Greatest Showman and Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah. Alas, at times her voice was swamped and the power of the great songs was lost.
Shortly after the concert began, many in the audience would have been momentarily distracted and possibly perturbed by news alerts flashing up on their cellphones. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern would be addressing media at 9pm to talk about the day’s new Covid cases. Not a good sign.
The alerts kept coming, providing an increasingly ominous undertone. The finale, Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture, was accompanied by a barrage of fireworks that overpowered the band and were not exactly in time with the cannonfire that punctuates the masterpiece. Small matter. Everyone loved it. The crowd ambled off and within an hour came an advisory from the arts fest folk: The final day of events yesterday was cancelled. It was an unfortunate end to a fantastic festival.