Auckland Philharmonia at the Auckland Town Hall

By WILLIAM DART

It's a brave orchestra that starts off a concert with Berlioz' Beatrice and Benedict overture. The French composer's tossed-around textures make virtuoso demands on the ensemble and, on Thursday night, the Auckland Philharmonia players proved confident and capable, with the charismatic Miguel Harth-Bedoya on the podium.

Next came Schumann's Cello Concerto, one of the most difficult scores to sustain in performance, with its contrasts of highly wrought emotions from the soloist and four-square orchestral punctuations.

Harth-Bedoya managed a masterly reconciliation. There was refinement in the clear wind chords of the opening bars, as well in those extraordinary chamber-music-like pages of the final cadenza while robust passages which can so easily sound stodgy had a welcome spring to their step.

Li-Wei brought a lovely transparency to his solo line, particularly in the central slow section. There was a real physical involvement here, as the cellist sometimes directed his own playing to fellow musicians sharing his space. The double-stopping in the Langsam was sun-ripened in its sweetness and a few stressed bars in the final Allegro only momentarily unsettling.

Lissa Meridan's blast, the second in the orchestra's Snapshots commissions, lived up to its name as it effectively tracked the inexorable fade of a cataclysmic orchestral chord.

Brief enough to be played twice by the orchestra, there were the expected nods to Lutoslawski and Ligeti, along with some new sounds here and there.

Whistling voices lulled us offguard in the opening bars and the strange sonorities of the closing pages were only explained when the composer herself emerged from the ranks of the orchestra, clutching a digeridoo. My cultural appropriation metre went momentarily into red ... but perhaps all's fair in love and sonic exploration.

The concert ended with Sibelius' Fifth Symphony. Harth-Bedoya talked to us of its lyricism, its colours and the unstoppable momentum towards its final movement, and the orchestra delivered magnificently on all three counts.

The huge span of the first movement inspired awe without sacrificing detail; the Andante mosso proved the soul of clarity and the brass lent their impressive weight to one of the most exciting Sibelius Finales in memory.