Edvard Tchivzhel conducts for Auckland Philharmonia

Edvard Tchivzhel is an expert in Russian music.

The baton's in a familiar hand when the Auckland Philharmonia takes to the Town Hall stage on Thursday. Conductor Edvard Tchivzhel has been visiting us regularly since 1991, the year he and his family defected from his native Russia.

"I needed to live in the best part of the world," he says, looking out over some patchy weather on Auckland Harbour. "Back in Russia I used to listen to radio programmes on the Voice of America and I told myself, some day I will be out."

It was the complete lack of freedom that most irked him.

"I never signed any contract myself. Contracts for Russian artists were signed by the Soviet Artists' Union and they would negotiate a price. When you came back from an overseas tour, they would take 50 per cent of your salary if you had a name, 80 per cent if you were a beginner, as I was."

Now based in the United States and, since 1999, an American citizen, he heads two orchestras, South Carolina's Greenville Symphony and the Fort Wayne Philharmonic in Indiana. Both make full use of his expertise in the field of Russian music, as the AP will do with tomorrow night's all-Russian line-up.

Why is the music of his homeland so popular with audiences? "Because of its extreme sincerity and extreme emotional excitement," Tchivzhel fires back, without hesitation. "Russia developed later than the West. Our music was in the hands of amateurs and foreigners in the time of Haydn and Mozart, but then, with Glinka [commonly regarded as the founder of Russian musical nationalism], there was an explosion."

At the top of Thursday's bill is Rimsky-Korsakov's Tsar Sultan. Rimsky-Korsakov was an underappreciated composer and "the musical father or grandfather of everyone on the programme", says Tchivzhel.

Yet there were pieces by Rimsky-Korsakov that Tchivzhel did not come into contact with until he left Russia. Many - even the popular Russian Easter Overture - had been suppressed because of their religious associations.

"Certainly, all Russian music which had religious texts was completely prohibited. Although you were allowed to play the Mozart and Verdi requiems because nobody knew the words."

The conductor is looking forward to working once again with his old friend, pianist Nikolai Demidenko, in Rachmaninov's Fourth Piano Concerto - the last time the two men played this work together was over 20 years ago, in Leningrad.

The concerto itself was written in exile in America, "in a style that was a little more spicy, a little more sarcastic, but Rachmaninov remained true to himself. He didn't betray his direction and talent just to be fashionable."

Tchivzhel and Demidenko will be fielding questions from the audience when the AP presents a Happy Hour introduction to the concert, with Annie Whittle as MC.

What: Auckland Philharmonia
Where and when: Auckland Town Hall, tomorrow at 8pm