It was a concert of hardcore favourites, to be sure, featuring Tchaikovsky, Chopin and Prokofiev, with its two Russian takes on Romeo and Juliet neatly coinciding with this year's Shakespeare celebrations.
Yet, in Garry Walker, Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra had just the conductor to lift what could have been a predictable programme into something of an altogether higher order.
The evening set off strongly with Tchaikovsky's popular overture-fantasy; its dark opening chorale was crisply ominous, its syncopated strife theme evoking a palpable sense of emotional and physical conflict.
Best of all, the theme of the young lovers never failed to soar, appropriately so for a concert titled The Greatest Love.
Two years ago, Alexander Gavrylyuk played Rachmaninov with the APO; tonight, the Ukrainian pianist's account of Chopin's F minor Concerto was so incandescent that the work's numerous compositional awkwardnesses simply vanished in his wake.
