KEY POINTS:
Lilburn's Festival Overture may have seemed geographically astray in a programme titled Northern Lights, but it certainly whipped up expectations for the final of the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra's Vero Aotea concerts.
Hints of Sibelius's rugged stride here and there were just the fuel for conductor Marko Letonja and orchestra to give us their crackling best.
Henry Wong Doe had returned from New York for the Grieg Piano Concerto, a warhorse that, ironically, is not so often released from stable onto concert stage.
The pianist is an inveterate showman, flamboyant of gesture, given to casting eyes heavenwards in moments of ecstasy.
Apart from some passing smudges in the first movement and a few tangles in the third, the concerto came off well. Wong Doe balanced volatility and lyricism, with the orchestra beside him all the way, especially in the sumptuous Adagio.
Another virtuoso turn had actor Paolo Rotondo narrating and playing a host of Ibsen's characters in Grieg's Peer Gynt.
There were the expected orchestral favourites, from a Morning of the utmost clarity to a Mountain King's lair that had you hoping the Aotea was earthquake-proof. The musicians clearly enjoyed the exotic Arabian Dance, which took the place of Anitra's customary waltz.
For 53 minutes, we were as youngsters at the foot of a master storyteller. The rapscallion Peer was all cheeky Cockney, his mother Ase a crone who had slipped out of Monty Python and the Mountain King, a wily fellow of indeterminate nationality and dark, twisted philosophies.
A lot of it was, frankly, fun but the death of Ase was poignantly handled, Rotondo's Peer sobbing against the APO strings at their most eloquent.
Emma Roxburgh delivered Solveig's two songs, including the final lullaby, with an unforced grace and naturalness, although, when her contribution is 35 minutes into the presentation, one wonders why she had to sit on stage, oratorio-style, for the duration.
The tale concluded bluntly (on stage, Solveig's Lullaby rounds things off) but Letonja came up with the Intermezzo from Sibelius's Karelia - an encore with aforethought, linking back to the Lilburn that had opened the evening.
