Thank composer Gustav Holst for the full house at Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra's The Planets, the second instalment of its Bayleys Great Classics series.
Yet Austrian conductor Hans Graf bewitched the audience from his very first downbeat, with the enchanted sound worlds of two Debussy Images. An impeccable Rondes de Printemps was a shimmering tapestry of flecks and efflorescence, its shifting unpredictability revealing the composer's subtle radicalism.
One does tire of Debussy's perky quotations of a well-known English folk tune in Gigues, even bobbing away on xylophone and trumpets at one point, but poetic amends were splendidly made with Camille Wells' expressive oboe d'amore solos.
Tchaikovsky's Variations on a Rococo Theme may lack the life-and-death struggle that underpins the composer's better-known concertos for piano and violin, but its steady procession of set pieces, each with its own elaborations, is in the same spirit as a succession of solo turns in one of his ballets.
Soloist, Li-Wei Qin deserved all the accolades of a musical premier danseur, injecting character and individuality into his playing down to the last cadenza-like eruption.
Instead of the expected Bach encore, a Lamentatio by the contemporary Italian Giovanni Sollima was a welcome surprise. For almost five minutes, the Australian cellist ran the virtuoso gamut, from vocalised lament to furioso outbursts, and held us rapt.
