Auckland Philharmonia at the Auckland Town Hall

Xian Zhang returns to helm the Auckland Philharmonia.

The absolute assurance of conductor Xian Zhang was apparent just bars into Brahms' Tragic Overture. In only a few seconds, so many ideas are released - two vast chords, a searching string unison over murmuring timpani and a molto crescendo for full orchestra. Zhang effortlessly caught the character of each.

This little-heard work proved a dramatic opening for Zhang's second concert with the Auckland Philharmonia.

The players moulded themselves into her surging textures and the occasional scruffiness in trombones and violins was a small price to pay for the vitality of the interpretation.

Patricia Wright offered six numbers from Canteloube's Songs of the Auvergne, including the well-known Bailero and Malurous Qu'o Uno Fenno.

For those who like these folk-songs taken a little closer to the soil in vocal colour, then Wright's lustrous tone, closer to Te Kanawa than Netania Davrath, might not have quite fitted the bill.

However, for sheer beauty of line, her performance could not have been bettered, and impish humour was delivered where required.

Wright's ability to catch different vocal timbres (three in the opening La Pastoura) and mood (the sense of utter desolation that she brought to the five-note melody in Lo Calhe) marks her as the most versatile soprano working in the country today.

The orchestra was also fired by Canteloube's palette with many impressive solo turns, including David Guerin's crystalline piano and Martin Lee's tangy oboe in Bailero.

Tchaikovsky's Pathetique Symphony had almost everything - the detail of chamber music when Jane Kirchner's bassoon drew us into Tchaikovsky's neurosis-tossed world, followed by stirring melodies, a storm of an Allegro vivo and an earth-shaking climax for strings and trombones.

Zhang excelled herself in the graceful second movement, intensifying the yearning of its Trio, while the scherzo whirled the audience into a frenzy of applause once its final chord had died away.

For a moment it seemed as if the dramatic impact of Tchaikovsky's Finale might be sabotaged.

The distraction was irritating, but Zhang and her players reinstated the mood immediately, and this most heartfelt and curiously stoic of all the composer's utterances, wrought its magic yet again.