Performance: Auckland Philharmonia

Town Hall

Review: Heath Lees

You might think that, with just two concerts to go in their Royal and SunAlliance concert series, the Auckland Philharmonia might be flagging.

But you'd be wrong.

On last Thursday's evidence, they are brim-full of imagination in the programme department, and if violinist Corey Cerovsek is anything to go by, they've been keeping their most sensational surprises for the last lap.

No doubt the orchestra's still-new music director, Miguel Harth-Bedoya, has had a hand in the North and South American items that have given real bounce to the programmes this year, and this concert's opening lean and rhythmic Danzon Cubano by Copland was a good example, tightly played.

Lutoslawski's substantial yet little known Concerto for Orchestra keeps the usual concerto layout of three movements, but instead of showcasing one solo instrument, the composer transforms the expanded orchestra into an elevated solo role, and writes virtuosic music of great difficulty and flamboyance.

It was a fine tribute to Daniel Hege's conducting and communicating skills that the piece drew absorbed attention throughout, even in the complex structural course of the last movement, which grew expressively and purposefully to an impressive ending that showed the Philharmonia's brass section off to perfection.

Lutoslawski's orchestral concerto was preceded by an impressionistic little piece by Liadov, called "The Enchanted Lake," which owed much to Wagner's "Forest Murmurs" interlude from Siegfried.

The sensation of the evening was certainly the Canadian-born violinist Corey Cerovsek, who overcame a cold and misjudged opening to warm up and broaden out into Dvorak's fiendishly hard violin concerto, and reveal an all-embracing level of skill, expressiveness and power that is rarely heard here.

Influenced by the soloist's passion for the music, the orchestra came alive and took brilliant possession of a work that is notoriously difficult to bring off successfully in live performance.

A concert like this reminds one how lucky this city is to have such a good orchestra with the courage to offer fresh programmes, and the reputation to attract soloists of this calibre.