The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra at the Auckland Town Hall

By WILLIAM DART

Iannis Xenakis once described Roger Woodward as "half man-half dragon" and the Australian pianist's performances with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra have proved the sharpness of the Greek composer's observation.

On Friday the generous Woodward gave two concertos. Beethoven's Third was nervy with its exaggerations of the brutal and understated; the soloist toyed with our expectations in a reluctant slow movement, then showed meticulous and mannered articulation in the Finale.

After the interval, the Steinway seemed the same on the outside, but unseen objects scattered on the strings turned Woodward into a one-man crystalline gamelan.

John Cage's 53-year-old Concerto for Prepared Piano and Orchestra is still a radical work, questioning as it does so many of our concert hall preconceptions.

Even apart from its aleatoric elements, which meant an unusually relaxed James Judd made expressive arm movements rather than baton-stabs, there was mood lighting and a quirky redistribution of players - the tuba sitting where the first violins are found. Cage calls for pre-recorded music, too, and the use of what sounded like a Pacific choir at one point was appreciated.

The audience was wonderstruck by it all, some not realising, perhaps, that Cage's fragile soundworld would be the perfect calm before the rip-roaring storm of Bartok's Miraculous Mandarin Suite that closed the concert.

On the Saturday night, as part of a concert arranged around a theme of death and attracting an alarmingly small audience, Woodward romped through Liszt's Totentanz.

Much of this is flashy circus stuff, although there was lyricism abounding in the long central piano solo. If the instrument itself had been litigious, it could well have filed assault and battery charges for the last minutes of the piece, as Woodward pounded all the thunderstorms in hell out of it - the sort of "shock and awe" campaign that the world really needs.

Saturday night was an evening of two symphonies. Most of the programme was taken up by a Berlioz Symphonie fantastique so feverish that one suspected that the French composer may have been inspired by cocaine rather than opium.

Judd was in his element, relentlessly displaying the virtuosity of his players which was most tellingly revealed in the Elysian fields of the third.

David Farquhar's Third Symphony, Remembered Songs, took a third of Berlioz' hour to make its point. There were crucial departures from the composer's earlier song-cycle, In Despite of Death which had inspired it.

The key shift by the end of the first movement, along with the more sparing use of metre changes in the Finale, suggested an important journey of reconciliation had been made.

Although the performance was not perfect in cohesion, it will be inspirational by its final Wellington performance next Saturday, which, thanks to Concert FM, will be available to those who live beyond the capital through a live broadcast.