Performance: Auckland Philharmonia

By HEATH LEES

TOWN HALL, Auckland - This orchestra doesn't just schedule unusual works for us to enjoy; it also pushes its own boundaries hard, to give these pieces the best performance it can.

So the opening work of Thursday's Royal SunAlliance concert - American composer Samuel Barber's First Symphony - got the full treatment from everyone, and positively glowed from the experience.

The symphony is a work of the middle 1930s, half-tonal, half-academic and, to be frank, at times half-baked.

But there are marvellous moments and ideas that flower out along the way.

Like the expansive opening, which fellow-American conductor Christopher Wilkins drew out grandly. Or like the animated counterpoint on the strings, which the Philharmonia's players tackled with a feisty rhythmic bite. Or like the central slow section, blessed by one of the world's longest and most seductive oboe melodies, and ravishingly played on this occasion by Martin Lee.

A decade after the appearance of Barber's American work, the Hungarian composer Bartok died, leaving the unfinished draft of a new viola concerto.

Braving lawsuits and threats of lawsuits from publishers, the Bartok family and others, some intrepid musicians have corrected, constructed and completed the Bartok family's officially approved versions of this work.

Here, Csaba Erdelyi's premier public performance of his own version harnessed feeling and authority with effortless technical skill to bring the music to new life. Most gratifying was the sense of roundedness that emerged from the dark and disparate work, a dying composer's last musical utterance.

Erdelyi's ability to portray a vast, brooding horizon in one moment, and a childlike pleasure in dance the next was impressive, as was the closing moto perpetuo - Bartok exulting in never-ending musical movement even though, as Erdelyi's additional programme note reminded us, the composer's own music had already run out.

After such commitment in the first half, Mendelssohn's "Scottish" Symphony, which the orchestra played marvellously a couple of seasons ago, came nowhere near setting the heather on fire.

A routine performance only, which the Auckland Philharmonia can ill afford.