Auckland Philharmonia at the Town Hall

By WILLIAM DART

Miguel Harth-Bedoya's spiel from the podium doesn't mince words. The Philharmonia is going to give an all-20th century programme and it is going to be expressive, colourful and extremely tasteful - words that describe Maurice Ravel's music to the last semiquaver.

Apart from Ginastera's Estancia and a brilliant stalk through Prokofiev's Tybalt's Death as an encore, the evening is devoted to the French composer.

First up is Ginastera's wildly extrovert canvas. Three of Estancia's four movements are unbridled in their gusto; the final Malambo almost pounds the audience into willing submission (drowning the coughs which tried to sabotage the piano and flutes' languorous moments in the earlier Danza del trigo).

There is much to admire in the way that Harth-Bedoya slashes his way through to the score's often raucous heart with the players giving all they've got, most dramatically when the dark colours cluster around the thundering timpani in Los Peones.

Michael Houstoun is masterful in Ravel's Concerto for the Left Hand, as indeed he was when he played the work in the orchestra's series last year, and on CD shortly afterwards.

The orchestra and conductor luxuriate in the huge crescendo of the opening pages, running from murky dawn to full Mediterranean sunlight in a few minutes, and revel in the elegant sawdust and glitter later on.

Houstoun's part, at its most substantial in the extended solo passages, inspires one of the pianist's more reflective performances.

After interval, Harth-Bedoya draws musique noire out of the Prelude of Ravel's Rapsodie espagnole, a piece that Ravel himself described as voluptuously drowsy and ecstatic.

Throughout, the players illuminate the score's many colours and moods with a precision that would have appealed to the classicist in the composer, breathtakingly so in the final Feria.

If the Rapsodie reminds us of Rimsky-Korsakov and Chabrier and hints at Herrmann and Falla to come, there are countless musical spirits hovering over Ravel's Daphnis and Chloe, all reconstituted and finessed through the French composer's imagination.

The Second Suite from the ballet, even without its chorusing voices, is another colourfest and treated as such, in a memorable, virtuoso turn.