The Auckland Chamber Orchestra at the Town Hall Concert Chamber

By WILLIAM DART

Vivaldi's Four Seasons is the hardiest of perennials. On CD, it has survived koto ensemble and toytown instruments and Sunday saw Peter Scholes and the Auckland Chamber Orchestra giving the work yet another twist, with Scholes playing the solo violin part on a variety of wind instruments.

Perhaps, bearing in mind the deconstructionist tactics of artists like jazzman Uri Caine, who klezmerised Mahler and put rappers and harpsichords side by side in Bach's Goldberg Variations, Vivaldi might have been twisted a little more.

Sometimes the transcription seemed too literal. Scholes' wild glissandi, straight out of Rhapsody in Blue, proved a welcome jolt in the first movement of Autumn, along with one particularly raunchy and raucous episode later in that concerto.

This was the "battle between harmony, form and rationality and the opposing forces of invention, fantasy and creativity" that lies behind the work's title.

There were many, many pluses: the Summer birds chirruped with glee on sopranino recorder, the bass clarinet's stalking arpeggios made Autumn ominous rather than mellow and the E flat clarinet's low register provided just the right wintry blast. Alto saxophone put the blues into Spring, although here, as elsewhere, insubstantial string tone was a worry.

In the first half of the concert, Scholes gave us a one-man history of music from 40,000 BC (the man has a sense of humour) to 1987. He improvised on a simple pipe, set van Eyck's English Nightingale warbling in style and charmed us with a Telemann Fantasia on a lovely alto recorder made by New Zealand's own Paul Whinray. A Stadler Caprice called for a replica of a 19th century boxwood clarinet, and Stravinsky's Three Pieces of 1919 was a virtuoso turn.

After a poignant Lament by Alan Hovhaness, all luminescent sweeps of sound and Arabian-flavoured pitch bending, Scholes gave us an ear-popping rendition of his own prize-winning Wireless, which manages to deliver an A-Z of contemporary clarinet technique and yet not forget that it is music.

A good-sized audience, which had been taken on many wonderful journeys during the evening, was privileged to have experienced this engaging and unusual concert.