The Eggner Trio at Auckland Town Hall

From the first few phrases of Brahms' C minor Trio, it was evident that the Eggner Trio were about to give us one of the finest concerts of this season.

With impassioned string chords from Georg and Florian Eggner, relentlessly driven by Christoph Eggner's piano, this was as much a summons as an invitation.

One marvelled at the three brothers' rare ability to reconcile the composer's melodic sweep with the minutest of detail; by carefully observing Brahms' dynamics, three-note motifs seemed to breathe with a life of their own. In the second movement, dialogue was all; tantalising colours, in the softer range, bordered on flautando.

The Andante grazioso, with its teasing changes of metre, inveigled us with string duets between miniature piano intermezzi.

The Eggners opened a world of many contrasts in Shostakovich's rarely heard First Piano Trio. Its opening theme, elegiac with a note of caution, looks forward to the plaintive oboe melody of the First Symphony. The musicians made this tune the emotional centre of the work, although they were not afraid to be coyly pretty or throw themselves into the equivalent of a Soviet hoedown.

After interval, it was the last of Beethoven's Trios, the Archduke, which, a few days earlier, Christoph Eggner had singled out to me as a work in which the Trio felt their interpretation had grown since they first tackled it.

With tone that never strayed from Viennese suave, their first movement encompassed both titanic utterance and muted sighs. The central section, a patchwork of trills and trickling thirds, was enchanting.

The bubbling Scherzo acknowledged the dance-floor, buoyed by string pizzicato. The musicians were unerring when the movement turned mysteriously chromatic.

An Andante which was both cantabile and con moto built up to passages of almost orchestral richness.

But all good things must come to an end. Beethoven's Finale, with capricious rhythms being won over by an earthy tarantella, was the parting virtuoso turn from the ensemble.

After such substantial main course fare, the encore could not have been a better chosen sweet - Hans Gal's frothy Variations on a Popular Viennese Tune.