William Dart review: Auckland Philharmonia dazzles with Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony finale – William Dart

• Conductor Leo Hussain introduced the concert as featuring six composers for the price of four.
• Tchaikovsky’s Mozartiana Suite and Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony highlighted the performance with energetic and detailed renditions.
• Australian recorder virtuoso Genevieve Lacey impressed with Elena Kats-Chernin’s Re-Inventions, showcasing wit and rhythmic play.

Conductor Leo Hussain introduced Auckland Philharmonia’s Mozart’s Jupiter concert as the bargain of the season, featuring six composers for the price of four.

An irresistibly propulsive performance of Mozart’s final symphony would be our ultimate destination but, before that, we time-travelled in style as three composers responded to various music from their past.

Tchaikovsky’s Mozartiana Suite was a balletic delight. A fiery scherzo of a gigue and an occasionally pungent menuet swept us to a gorgeously sentimental Ave Verum Corpus, with lashings of harp and sweet muted strings.

A strutting theme with a string of showcase variations offered brilliant cadenza opportunities for concertmaster Andrew Beer and principal clarinet Jonathan Cohen.

George Benjamin’s 2021 transcription of three Purcell Fantasias allowed the 16th-century originals to provide their own modernisms, their volatile harmonies delicately tinted with intricate voicings and exotic colours, including Korean temple bell.

Leo Hussain. Photo / Pia Clodi

Australian recorder virtuoso Genevieve Lacey would use five different instruments in Elena Kats-Chernin’s Re-Inventions, a witty and elegantly energetic romp, fashioned around Bach’s two-part Inventions for keyboard.

Lacey’s ownership of this work, developed in improv sessions with its composer, was apparent from the irrepressible bubbling of its first movement.

Genevieve Lacey. Photo / Keith Saunders

There were moments of mysterious poetry when lower-pitched instruments were used and it was impossible not to be caught up in the infectious rhythmic play as Lacey sparred with the orchestral strings.

Most delicious of all were passages which strayed into territory closer to bossa nova than Bach.

Lacey’s encore, two short evocations of Australian birdlife by John Rodgers, took us from concert hall to the great outdoors, an illusion only momentarily shattered by the intrusion of an impudent cellphone.

Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony was predictably the grandest of grand finales, blending nobility and high spirits through Hussain’s extremely lively tempi.

Exquisite detail and phrasing made for a memorable andante cantabile and, before the audience was carried away by Mozart’s final contrapuntal apotheosis, the minuet took time out for a freewheeling dance, spurred on by a few extra timpani flourishes from Steven Logan.