Review: Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra Viva Espana

Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra's Viva Espana concert offered two lively hours in the land of castanets, mantillas and matadors, launched with a vivid account of the First Suite from Bizet's Carmen.

Bizet's opening Prelude was unflinching in its passions and, by the final movement, the toreadors had just the right machismo strut in their collective step. Yet the nuanced textures of the Intermezzo showed the admirable discipline that conductor Baldur Bronnimann demands when he stands in front of the orchestra.

Josef Spacek won last year's Michael Hill International Violin Competition with an impressive Prokofiev G minor Concerto. Lalo's Symphonie Espagnole may have seemed a conservative work with which to welcome him back, but the young Czech injected his own personality into the familiar piece.

Bronnimann had introduced the Lalo with a jest that Spain was like the wild west for French composers, a place that was more "raw", offering the French the chance to be "less French".

In fact, the strength of Spacek's approach was its very Gallic grace. Playing down any melodramatics, yet never failing the work's virtuoso demands, he dealt out a winning, insinuating lyricism, especially in the more reflective moments of the second movement.

The Andante had an emotional depth that is not always so evident in many readings.

After interval, the concert belonged to Ravel. First up was his 1908 Rapsodie espagnole, a thrilling, dark-hued evocation of life below the Pyrenees.

The APO made it just that. Its "Prelude a la nuit" was all ghostly insistence, its pent-up tensions released in an infectious Malaguena. The third movement, a Habanera, laid out an evocatively scored hinterland between major and minor, and all the tonal shades in between.

Bronnimann had told me, just last week, that Bolero stands or falls by the quality of its soloists and what they do with the wafting melodies that Ravel gives them.

With the conductor presiding over the work's mammoth 15 minute crescendo, the solos were all that could be wished for, from Catherine Bowie's melodious welcome to a few bars in which Donald Nicholls' soprano saxophone seemed to make time itself stand still.

All in all, a first-class trip to Spain.