Concert review: NZSO, Auckland Town Hall

Hakan Hardenberger: an invincible soloist.

Swedish trumpeter adds touch of lyricism to an engulfing wave of symphonic sound.

When the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra brought its Bold Worlds concert to town last year, the accent was on percussion; Colin Currie dashed around, mallets in hand, in a new Kalevi Aho concerto, and snare drum ruled in Nielsen's craggy Fifth Symphony.

This year's instalment was a brass-laden affair.

For the first few pages of Janacek's Sinfonia, the breathtaking surge of massed brass and timpani provoked smiles in the violin ranks, and one envied them for their proximity to this all-engulfing wave of sound.

Janacek's 1926 score is a remarkable achievement for a 72-year-old. At its core, it is folkish, but far from folksy; one hears Stravinsky in its textural swerves and here, Russian conductor Dima Slobodeniouk brought a specially Slavic sweep to the strings in its second movement.

Brett Dean's new trumpet concerto, Dramatis Personae, toyed tongue-in-cheek with issues of superheroics, with an invincible soloist in Hakan Hardenberger.

The 13 minutes of its first movement, introduced by the mysterious click and clack of percussion, had the Swedish trumpeter and orchestra in a full and resourceful duel, against a backdrop of subtly evoked remembrances of music past.

A central "soliloquy", in which Hardenberger had earlier told us to listen out for the rhythm of "to be or not to be", showcased his lyricism.

The work ended with a musical circus. Slobodeniouk's energetic ringmaster kept the Ivesian tune-scramble under control, until Hardenberger had been assimilated into the orchestra's trumpet section.

Initially, I feared that Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition might be presented in the vulgar, heavy-handed Peter Breiner arrangement that the NZSO recorded for Naxos last year. I was mightily relieved when it turned out to be the standard Ravel re-score. The Russian conductor took this music to heart. Each punctuating Promenade had its own character, throwing the portraits in between into sharp focus.

Early on, Mussorgsky's gnome was more malevolent than mischievous, erupting in a howl of crescendo.

Yet could one imagine, seconds later, a more romantic vision of an old castle, with Reuben Chin's elegiac saxophone solo wrapped in the lushest of strings?

Classical review

What: New Zealand Symphony Orchestra
Where and when: Auckland Town Hall, Saturday
Reviewer: William Dart.