The rarely-programmed Sinfonia Domestica of Richard Strauss offered 44 minutes of uber-romantic immersion in the second half of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra's Mozart & Strauss concert.
Edo de Waart conducted with the affection and authority that this mammoth score demands and his 110-piece orchestra, with a quartet of saxophones and eight horns, redefined sonic luxuriance.
But ultimately the dizzying detail of this 1903 work is somewhat exhausting, making one realise why other composers at the time were forging new, shorter and sharper musical pathways.
This is Strauss at his most fulsome, showing us 24 hours of family life with the same gravitas accorded to Nietzsche's philosophy in the mere half-an-hour of Thus Spake Zarathustra.
Little wonder that the great Wagnerian conductor Hans Richter once pointed out the irony of the Gods of Valhalla barely making a quarter of the sound of Strauss' Bavarian baby being given a bath.
