Performance: Auckland Philharmonia

Auckland Town Hall

Review: Heath Lees

This concert was the first of four, grouped under the title Celebration Series and sponsored by Rudd Watts and Stone.

The series doesn't pretend to be more than enjoyable summer music. In addition to the "Spanish" night last Saturday, there will be a Beethoven night, a Vienna night (presumably without Beethoven) and of course the evergreen "Proms" concert.

When it comes to musical expression, Spain is rich in folk tradition, but its classical composers are thin on the ground. Most of the best "Spanish" pieces have been written by non-Spaniards, such as the Russian Rimsky-Korsakov, and of course a bevy of French composers - Debussy, Ravel, Chabrier and Lalo all come to mind.

For this programme, it was Rimsky-Korsakov and Lalo who provided the major supports, the former with his Capriccio espagnol - played with colour but without fire - and the latter with the hybrid Symphonie espagnole, which pretends to be a symphony but is actually a four-movement concerto.

As violin soloist, the Philharmonia's leader, Justine Cormack, had exchanged her usual formal black gear for a fiesta-like red-and-pink. Alas, the panache didn't extend to her violin-playing until well into the first movement, though the following, scherzo-like movement was a treat.

Lalo's score is a huge challenge even for professional soloists, and the final two movements are rarely convincing in performance. One wishes that Lalo, who conceived the work originally in five movements, had simply settled for the usual concerto framework of three.

Apart from the musical tourism, the "real" Spanish music had all the sensuous melodies, dance rhythms, guitar effects, and castanet sounds that we would expect from a programme that included Turina, de Falla, Granados and the less-known and unremarkable composer Gimenez.