Review: Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra at Auckland Town Hall

The coupling of Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony, the Variations on a Rococo Theme and a selection of instrumental music from the composer's operas gave a fascinating perspective to the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra's first Splendour of Tchaikovsky concert.

A shortish introduction to the 1887 opera The Enchantress was dazzlement pure and simple, sprinkled with moments in which Tchaikovsky seemed to be indulging in what we would now call postmodernist self-quotation. Radoslaw Szulc and his musicians ensured it enticed just as an overture should. After the orchestral virtuosity of this and a handful of operatic dances, the Variations on a Rococo Theme revealed a more classically inclined Tchaikovsky.

The rather fetching elegance of Jamie Walton's opening cello theme was a portent of the English cellist's insight and spontaneity. The occasional intonation blur in the high register was more than compensated for by the drive of the first cadenza, the wistful lyricism of the third variation and the fleet-fingered fourth.

After interval came Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony, a work too easily tethered in the warhorse stable.

However, the American conductor Michael Tilson Thomas has recently stood up for this score, likening the primal, devil-be-damned energy of its Finale to Prince's defiant party anthem 1999.

Szulc and his musicians held nothing back in this final movement. But we had been well primed for it all from the start; in that great sprawling first movement, the conductor took pains to lay out Tchaikovsky's inner demons and torments through the shifting musical structure.

This was a performance suffused with the dramatic. The Andantino, with its exemplary woodwind solos, had elegiac beauty claiming victory over a more sinister piu mosso theme. The headlong rush of the third movement's closing pages was a gauntlet to be picked up by the Finale.

Judging by the low audience numbers, Aucklanders are not aware of the Tchaikovskian splendours on offer. One hopes that more take advantage of Friday's instalment with violinist Natalia Lomeiko and music director Eckehard Stier at the helm.