Auckland Philharmonia at the Auckland Town Hall

The Auckland Philharmonia's MinterEllisonRuddWatts Spring season has always been one of the least predictable and most enjoyable events on the orchestra's calendar.

With each programme given its own geographical focus and a pre-concert buffet and entertainment available for those who want it, it's a time for the AP to play favourites as well as surprising us with less familiar pieces of repertoire.

Friday night's Silk Road proves to be quite a journey, setting off with a brisk canter through Beethoven's "Turkish March", marshalled with military precision by conductor Marc Taddei. Borodin's In the Steppes of Central Asia presses on with the voyage and has just the epic sweep needed, even if Borodin's hushed ending is sabotaged by the offstage sound of a violin tuning.

The well-tuned Li Chuanyun strolls on and takes the solo part in Chen Gang and He Zhan-hao's Butterfly Lovers Concerto. This is harmless musical confectionery, neatly packaged, and easier to accept as inoffensive muzak between the won ton soup and chow mein than concert hall fare.

The young man presents us with a dazzling Hungarian-style encore, with tremolos that threaten to saw through strings. It's a crowd-pleaser but I find myself crying out for the comparatively classical restraint of Helmut Zacharias.

After the interval, the fruity canvas of Charles Griffes' The Pleasure Dome of Kubla Khan is rendered magnificently, with big beefy climaxes and all due attention to its more delicate detail.

It's certainly a contrast to the pallid Reflection of the Moonlight in the Erquan Spring by the Chinese composer Hua Yan-jun. Without the strings' clever glissandi throughout, it could have passed for a very ordinary Celtic lament, but the AP is convincing enough to make a Chinese woman two rows away from me started singing along with the work's folksong.

There's no audience participation with Bartok's The Miraculous Mandarin, thank goodness, and little wonder - few concertgoers have daggers and nooses in their tote bags. Clearly the orchestra has been waiting for this challenge and, fired by Taddei, nothing is spared in a stark, brilliant account of the Chinatown of everyone's nightmares.