NZSO with Dmitri Alexeev at the Auckland Town Hall

By WILLIAM DART

The NZSO, in town again with conductor Matthias Bamert, could not have opened two concerts more differently. On Friday, Mendelssohn's sunny Italian Symphony proved the perfect distraction to winter, from the zesty swing of its first movement to its final dashing tarantella.

On Saturday, the opener was Ligeti Lontano. Ligeti's window on long-submerged dream worlds of childhood was prised open to reveal a vista of magical sonorities, thanks to the players' sensitivity in weaving the work's many strands of colour.

Dmitri Alexeev was breath-taking in Rachmaninov's Paganini Variations. With a keyboard touch that suggested those ivories might just be white hot, the Russian pianist took us gasping on a journey that could have been registered as a thrill-ride in a theme park.

The following evening it was Prokofiev's Second Piano Concerto, a wild work from the composer's student years, criticised at the time for sounding as if someone had emptied an inkwell on manuscript paper.

Alexeev took the piece by storm, particularly in the first cadenza, where his subtle voicing made nonsense of the splattered ink theory.

The second movement was as precipitous as one would like to experience without medical advice, and the energy did not let up for another 20 minutes when we were propelled on the final downhill rush.

For the main offerings, the orchestra focused on Dvorak and Brahms ... well, Brahms with a difference. Bamert has a special affection for Schoenberg's 1937 transcription of the Brahms Piano Quartet in G minor, and it shows. This Fifth Symphony of Brahms, as Schoenberg would jest, sprang to splendid, vibrant life.

Rich and often zany timbres criss-crossed through the score. There were touches of Mahler in the Intermezzo-like second movement and Shostakovich in the zing of the xylophone.

A mighty score, this, with a performance which gave it its dues.

Bamert obviously enjoyed Dvorak's G major Symphony on Saturday night, too, coming as near as he ever has to dancing on the podium.

What gloriously happy, life-affirming music this is. In the able hands of the NZSO players, it signed off a memorable weekend of music-making.