NZSO at the Auckland Town Hall

By WILLIAM DART

The NZSO's last visit for 2003 was momentous: two concerts including the last of the Lilburn Prize finalists, Irish pianist Barry Douglas, and Messiaen's massive Turangalila Symphony, all overseen by maestro Matthias Bamert.

The local led the way on Friday night. Michael Norris' Rays of the Sun, Shards of the Moon was a savvy slice of musical impressionism. Its 9m45s shimmered with promise and purpose, from the moment that mysterious scale edged out of the woodwind.

The whole score is a cleverly contrived and immaculately crafted study in sonic emergence, particularly on the harmonic side, using chords that were often only a sliver away from Messiaen, whom we were to hear the following evening.

After such vital music, Mendelssohn's Scottish Symphony was distinctly sluggish.

Bamert took infinite care (a beautifully judged opening which almost took the sing-song out of the rhythm; a nicely underplayed agitato in the Allegro) but there was a deadly earnestness too. By the Adagio one felt that the conductor was desperately searching for passions that simply weren't there to find.

These passions were revealed after interval, when Barry Douglas joined the orchestra for Brahms' Second Piano Concerto. Douglas, Bamert and the players fearlessly sustained the symphonic drive of the vast first movement; Douglas took the lead in a brooding, resolute Scherzo and the image of a leprechaun came to mind in the capricious Finale.

Offering contrast with Douglas' often Byronesque heroics, David Chickering's lovely cello solo in the Andante predictably stole the movement.

In Saturday's Mozart, the notorious Elvira Madigan concerto of K 467, the first few bars provided an object lesson in Mozartian phrasing. Douglas added unstrained elegance, wit and momentum; his sometimes flashy passage work bringing unexpected drama and tension to the ensemble.

Messiaen's Turangalila Symphony provided Saturday's grand finale. What an extraordinary work this is, commissioned by the Boston Symphony in 1945 and premiered four years later under the baton of Leonard Bernstein. Not surprisingly, there's a touch of Americana in its rhythms - the fifth movement is tres Copland - but it's also quintessentially French, a grand romantic gesture after two decades of modish cocktails from the composers of Les Six. Indeed, could it have even existed without the example (and chord progressions) of Ravel's Daphnis and Chloe?

The curiosity is the chameleon-like Ondes Martenot, one minute providing an electronic lacing to violin lines, then chortling and quipping with the woodwind the next. Cynthia Millar, whose artistry can be heard in films such as Ed Wood and alongside singers such as Bryan Ferry, transformed the instrument into the human voice French composers have always considered it, providing the perfect foil for Douglas' flurries of pianistic birdsong.

Turangalila is a mesmerising experience; Bamert and the players flooded our sensibilities with it, a fond farewell until they greet us again next April 23 with Mahler's Seventh.