The Australian Chamber at the Auckland Town Hall

By WILLIAM DART

From the first few minutes of Georges Lentz's Te Deum Laudamus, the Australian Chamber Orchestra was obviously out to woo its audience.

Listener-friendly to the max, this contemporary Australian piece spiked broad, sonorous chorales with dashes of dissonance, and the ensemble flaunted its ability to draw sounds mysteriously from the ether then spin them away into nothingness.

There was more flaunting with the Baroque repertoire that followed. Summer and Winter from Vivaldi's Four Seasons, offered split-second ensemble, and energetic group dynamics.

Richard Tognetti, as soloist, had a few duelling strings encounters with the cellos, although his playing was sometimes burdened with awkward ornamentation and overly grotesque effects, taking a lead perhaps from the Arcimboldo paintings reproduced in the programme.

When violinist Helen Rathbone joined him for the Bach D minor Double Concerto, things got a little too fast. Again, the first movement revealed what a precision team the ACO is, but solo lines did not always emerge as they should and crucial notes slipped out of the arching lines of the Largo.

Tognetti's Deviance took Paganini's original Caprice to places that Liszt, Brahms and Rachmaninov could hardly have imagined. But, for all the sonic cluster bombs and shuddering dissolves, the arrangement was most effective in the cool harmonic respite delivered by a trio of violas.

After the interval, Tognetti's transcription of Szymanowski's Second String Quartet offered the most substantial fare of the evening. The Polish composer poured his heart out in these pages, written at a time when he was under stress as head of the Warsaw Conservatory, and it showed.

Tognetti's arrangement heightened that emotionalism and this was a blistering performance. Bass and cello pizzicati throbbed through the dense mists of the first movement and the scherzo sustained a Bartokian energy.

Then there were those strange, ghostly fugues in the Finale, twisted wraiths that are eventually dissipated by their own anguish.

We didn't want or need more, but a Piazzolla Tango, played as if there were indeed 101 strings on stage, proved to be a civilised leave-taking.