Auckland Philharmonia at the Auckland Town Hall

By WILLIAM DART

Pity the poor bassoonist who has a yen to make it on the concert circuit. When it comes to repertoire, the pickings are abysmally lean, consisting of minor works from mostly B-list composers.

On Thursday, playing with the Auckland Philharmonia, Daniel Matsukawa gave us Weber's solitary Concerto. Such was the American's verve and style that he almost persuaded us this paper-thin work was made of stauncher stuff.

Elegant phrasing released music where lesser talents might have revealed just chattering passage work, and his clear, melancholy tone lent the Adagio the romantic sheen it needs.

The sheer artistry of the man made one wish that more composers had been drawn to this instrument.

Weber proved welcome after Dorothy Buchanan's The Ghosts of Denniston. This vignette of a West Coast ghost town, the last of the orchestra's Kiwi Snapshots series, was arrant schmaltz, built around the sort of kitschy theme that might be heard over the closing credits of an afternoon soap, and seasoned with interludes that could have slipped in from spookier episodes of The X-Files.

Alongside Buchanan's rather tatty postcard, the Four Sea Interludes from Britten's Peter Grimes were a quartet of full-scale canvases.

A week working with Italian conductor Marco Zuccarini has paid off for the musicians, particularly in the renewed vitality of the strings. The Italian conductor invariably caught the sinister underlay of the pieces, even when least expected, from the delicate wash of Dawn to the terrifying clamour of the final storm, with appropriate thunder from Vadim Simongauz' timpani.

After interval, Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony thrilled, despite the occasional smudges in both brass and string lines. Zuccarini and his players sustained the epic architecture of the first movement and the great Largo pulsated with a sense of courage and survival. When melody surged forth, it was always melody with muscle.

Perhaps too much was made of changing tempi in the second movement, but this didn't hinder its effectiveness, particularly when the gruff orchestral forces drew back to allow concertmaster Justine Cormack to wax sardonically in waltz time.