Usually there's nothing like a Rossini overture to set a concert off with zing and zest but Il Signor Bruschino didn't do the trick for the Auckland Philharmonia on Thursday.
It wasn't any fault of the able musicians or conductor Vittorio Parisi - despite a few anaemic strands from celloshere and there, it was tidily delivered. Blame it on the composer. The overture, alas, is an also-ran in the Rossini stable. All the stand-tapping becomes too Hoffnung for comfort and the deathless cliche-spinning makes one realise the charm of thieving magpies and Sevillian barbers yet to come.
Accommodating two Steinways on stage for Michele Campanella and Monica Leone occasioned a major reshuffle. Once achieved, the peremptory orchestral tutti for Mozart's Two Piano Concerto did not augur well. Lines which should have been teased out, with just the right Viennese elegance, were disappointingly flat.
Campanella and Leone, however, were quite a team with everything measured to the last demi-semiquaver. Their unity was impeccable and yet each pianist maintained an individual character, with Campanella having grand fun with his punchy bass lines.
The Andante, one of Mozart's most beautiful, with a few dissonant tingles where you least expect them, allowed for orchestral beauties, particularly from oboes, woodwind and trilling violins.
The third movement may be the least interesting musically of the three, but its boisterousness was caught by all.
After waves of applause, the soloists returned, armed with a score of Brahms' Hungarian Dances and proceeded to give us the fourth. It was delectable, cajoling and roaring in turns, and would have made an even mightier impression if someone had lifted the piano lid.
After the interval, the orchestra had its turn to roar in Schubert's Great C major Symphony.
Conductor Parisi had the full measure of this mammoth score, especially with the second movement taken at a comparative canter.
Perhaps the first movement could have had more vitality, and strings seemed at times unnecessarily subdued. But it was the same strings who gave welcome heft to the surging sequences of the Scherzo and propelled the work to a magnificent conclusion.
