Auckland Philharmonia: at the Aotea Centre

By WILLIAM DART

From that spiralling flurry that introduces Tchaikovsky's Francesca da Rimini, Edvard Tchivzhel made it clear just who was in charge. This is home territory for the Russian conductor, using his baton as a duellist might a rapier, with dramatic sweeps and impassioned stabs.

The ploy worked - one was almost bowled over by the sound, which is no mean achievement in the Aotea Centre. The tormenting winds of Hell whistled around us in the white-hot string lines, while the orchestra thundered malevolently about them.

When Tchaikovsky bared his soul in one of his most lyrical violin utterances, Tchivzhel and his players didn't hold back on the emotions. Prokofiev's Fourth Piano Concerto, with Michael Houstoun as soloist, offered a cool contrast.

This is a work that languished unjustly in manuscript for a quarter of a century after it was written in 1931, and is still not major repertoire these days.

It has none of the theatrical presence of the composer's more famous Third Concerto; the joys of this left-hand-only work lie in delicacy of line and the frisson of irony. Houstoun is just the man for it, a pianist who can do more with one hand than some could achieve with three. His passagework in the opening Toccata was scrupulous, his sense of communion with the orchestra in the central Andante unimpeachable.

After interval, full and thrilling justice was done to the rich canvas of Rachmaninov's Symphonic Dances.

The first movement was mesmerising, elegantly so when Mark Storey's saxophone took centre stage. The stirring string melody, glowing in the hands of the AP, might have come from Puccini's pen had he decided to add Anna Karenina to his gallery of operatic heroines.

There was room for a certain playfulness in the shifting tempos of the second movement, while the Finale was fired by its own dark intensity.

A brilliant encore of Rimsky-Korsakov's Dance of the Buffoons brought the Russian circus to the Aotea stage.

Over the years, Tchivzhel has been responsible for some of the Auckland Philharmonia's finest performances. I for one can hardly wait until he returns.