Concert Review: NZ Symphony Orchestra, Auckland Town Hall

Macedonian Piano star Simon Trpceski. Photo / Supplied

The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra's Russian Soul concert came courtesy of The Radio Network, a company specialising in what it describes as "result-driven accountable advertising solutions" for the commercial radio sector.

Accordingly, Peter Walls, the NZSO's chief executive, made it clear in the programme booklet that the priority was music with a broad appeal.

A roster of Russian favourites might not have seemed so adventurous, but with the orchestra at its streamlined best, a star soloist and a conductor with a individual and fervent point of view, it was a memorable evening.

Pinchas Steinberg stirred up a zesty cauldron in Rimsky-Korsakov's showy version of Night on Bald Mountain. Woodwind shrieked while chattering dissonances made one feel that Stravinsky's Sacre might burst from the pot at any moment. Only in the final pages, despite exquisite playing, did one pine for the uncompromising wildness of Mussorgsky's original. Simon Trpceski is a born showman, gazing over the audience during rare snatches of respite in Prokofiev's Third Piano Concerto. With no technical problems to worry about, his passagework was a gleaming marvel. Trpceski also tuned into Prokofiev's humour in a pert castanet-laced march and, taking a lead from his orchestral colleagues, invested his melodies with a wistful melancholy, especially when spiked with a dash of the composer's harmonic bitters.

For an encore, Vesa-Matti Leppanen and Andrew Joyce joined him in a dizzying, tavernish transcription of a dance from Skopje, a tavernish romp.

Pinchas Steinberg approached Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony with remarkable freshness.

The opening brass theme was more portent than fanfare; sighing violins and cellos injected the first theme's tentative waltz with a telling irony.

And when the various musical ideas started firing around the orchestra, you realised the conductor was arguing for this composer to be taken much more seriously as a symphonist.

The Andantino, with a beautifully contoured oboe solo, let the notes speak for themselves and after an occasionally angry showering of pizzicato in the Scherzo, a shattering Finale released Tchaikovsky's inner demons with a tumultuous roar.