Classical review: New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra. Photo / Mable Wong

Sitting in the Town Hall, listening to The Lark Ascending, just as I had been the night before, it was almost a Groundhog Day moment. And, on my return home, a few hours later, Hayley Cropper would take her self-administered leave of Coronation Street to the same familiar pastoral strains of Vaughan Williams.

The eerie coincidence of it all stressed just how powerful the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra's Friday performance had been, set in the lush, vernal textures that conductor Jaime Martin coaxed from the orchestral strings.

Concertmaster Vesa-Matti Leppanen was an exemplary soloist. His violin inhabited the work's rhapsodic soul, "singing 'til his heaven fills", to borrow a phrase from the George Meredith poem that inspired the composer.

Jakob Koranyi then took the stage for Walton's 1956 Concerto, a score that, despite its subtle Mediterranean bloom, casts a mood of bittersweet melancholy.

The Swedish cellist caught this from the start while, around him, Martin laid out intriguing washes of colour, from vibrant shimmer to swooning film noir strings. Throughout, Koranyi's ability to find the natural in every twist and turn of Walton's line paralleled the spontaneity that the composer felt was such a feature of his own writing.

Applause between movements was spontaneous, if irritating, and a riveting third movement cadenza hinted at an encore to come.

This was the Sarabande from Bach's C major Cello Suite, which floated through the hall with its own buoyant grace, Koranyi's carefully considered articulation taking the place of expected ornamentation.

Just last week, Martin spoke of the thrill of standing in front of 109 musicians for Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring; after interval, we audience felt it too. A closing Sacrificial Dance was cataclysmically exciting.

Yet, there was also an attention to detail that some conductors do not realise, especially in the flickering and darting of the diamond-like woodwind, after introducing themselves so beautifully in the languid volatility of Stravinsky's opening pages.