Mozart Around the World at the Auckland Town Hall

By WILLIAM DART

With the NZSO Chamber Orchestra waiting on stage, Gilles Apap made a star entrance; a resonant Bach Partita merged into the insinuating rhythms of an Irish reel. Feet tapped around the hall, and the violinist had pulled off the first of many coups to come.

From that point, most of the audience were hanging on every stroke of his bow.

After an energetic Praeludium and Allegro by Fritz Kreisler, a faux-Baroque curiosity that's often more Elgar and Grieg than anything remotely connected with the 18th century, it was time for Mozart's G major Concerto.

The orchestra gave us a good-spirited bluster by way of a tutti and then Apap charmed with his graceful, stylish playing. The slow movement saw him leaving the stage, wandering down the aisle taking Mozart's gorgeous melody with him.

The Finale was the much-vaunted Mozart Around the World, which had given the concert its title. Although there were too many Victor Borge antics for my taste, Apap did come up with some intriguing transformations of Mozart's tune, whistling it to his own strummed violin, and giving it a raga twist, with cello deputising for tamboura.

After the interval, the orchestra's Third Brandenburg Concerto added little to the evening apart from minutes. The zest was commendable, but solos were often cruelly exposed. With no harpsichordist in attendance, the orchestra sang the short linking passage between the two movements, the effectiveness of which was thwarted by the audience's lusty applause after the first movement.

Bartok's Romanian Dances, mostly handled by the orchestra, featured a surprise turn from Apap when he contributed a leisurely solo in the third number, seated at the back of the stalls. Back on stage for Sarasate's Zigeunerweisen, he led his colleagues in the high-energy highlight of the concert.

There were two encores: Apap gave us Ysaye's D minor Sonata in all its dramatic glory, benefiting from the same gypsy fiddle that had made his opening Bach so full-voiced.

Then Apap's "buddy" Phil Salazar came on stage, with fiddle and baseball cap, for the final hoe-down, reeling away the final remaining minutes with the orchestra.