Review: NZSO National Youth Orchestra at Auckland Town Hall

The NZSO National Youth Orchestra marked its 50th anniversary with a high-spirited concert under the baton of Paul Daniel.

The English conductor has been unstinting in his praise of his young charges with their "huge amounts of energy that we don't know any more", and his commendations were fully justified.

The NZSO NYO supports New Zealand composers, and Natalie Hunt's Only to the Highest Mountain must be one of its finest commissions to date. An evocation of our land and its peoples, Hunt's piece stole upon us with mysterious incantations from off-stage oboe and cor anglais.

Thematically, the score was finely wrought, especially in the inexorable build-up to a massive chordal climax, but many ears would have been drawn to Hunt's unexpected colours. And rare it is to have effects like rustling paper and exhaling breath sound as inevitable and right as a G major arpeggio.

John Chen deserves his own passport to the land of Ravel, and he was a sensitive soloist in the composer's Concerto for the Left Hand. The pianist was particularly impressive in the shimmering Spanish ambience of the opening cadenza.

Daniel had made an ambitious choice with Mahler's Symphony No 7. Problematic even to seasoned professionals, this "comely and well-born" work, as its composer described it, is an unpredictable and jagged journey.

It was a thrill when this symphonic juggernaut took flight.

The woodwind were models of clarity and musicianship; there was a special surge of applause for them at the end.

Without exception, the many solos demanded of the players were first-rate, yet the impact of the full orchestra adroitly navigating the abrupt style-shifts of Mahler's Finale was the undoubted highlight of an unforgettable Friday evening.