Auckland Philharmonia at the Auckland Town Hall

By WILLIAM DART

Miguel Harth-Bedoya was a man with a mission on Thursday night. Introducing two works by Osvaldo Golijov, the conductor made the point that we don't hear enough contemporary music from outside New Zealand and this concert would be something of a corrective.

The strings of the Auckland Philharmonia took to Golijov's Last Round with appropriate chutzpah. It was a physical performance, with the two groups of players sparring among slashes and shrieks of sound. Golijov's directions may have read "macho, cool and dangerous". I imagined Bartok stirring up a Vivaldi storm in tango style.

When fury had taken its course, the piece ended in bitter-sweet serenity.

Patricia Wright, in voluptuous deep purple velvet, with diamante earrings to her shoulders, made Golijov's Three Songs the highlight of the evening.

"Close your eyes and you shall go to that sweet land all dreamers know," Wright sang, but to surrender so willingly would be to deny oneself the pleasure of this soprano's formidable stage presence.

Wright was the consummate artist, making so little of difficulties that even tested American soprano Dawn Upshaw when she performed the work last year, including some punishing tessitura in the second song.

With an electrifying lower register, she illuminated the dark, Spanish soul of this song and then transferred that intensity to the Emily Dickinson setting that followed. Behind, the orchestra provided a evocative back-drop.

After this, Ravel's Mother Goose Suite seemed a generosity we could have done without. It was gracefully played, through to its final fairyland Zarathustra, but we needed space to consider the Golijov works that had just played such tantalising games with our sensibilities.

After interval, Natalia Lomeiko revealed the form that won her the Michael Hill Competition last year, although Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto was a singularly unadventurous choice of repertoire.

But Lomeiko certainly had the work under her fingers, showing strain only in the moments of utmost virtuosity, although she seemed intent on avoiding some of the score's familiar rhetoric. The plaintive beauties of the central Canzonetta made curious connections with the Golijov from earlier in the evening.