The Town Hall acoustics served the often delicate textures well, and the interplay between soloist and orchestra through Berg's ever-flexible tempos and dynamics, was absolutely captivating.
Edo de Waart is a seasoned Mahler conductor, having recording the composer's complete symphonic cycle in 1995.
He laid out a clear and uncluttered narrative in the composer's First Symphony.
The opening movement progressed from mysterious fanfares to jubilant Teutonic hoe-down, while the second found the perfect contrast between rumbustious country dance and a graceful nod to Schubert. At the end, the first of Mahler's grand symphonic codas provided the perfect vehicle for the NZSO to flex its considerable musical muscles.
What: New Zealand Symphony Orchestra
When: Saturday
A well-filled venue for tonight's New Zealand Symphony Orchestra concert attested to the box office power of the familiar.
The centrepiece was Bruch's First Violin Concerto, so familiar that some would tether it firmly in the warhorse corral, but soloist Karen Gomyo thrillingly liberated it.
The sheer sweep of her conception was irresistible, from virtuoso manoeuvres in the first movement to a finale that defined its own display of fire and fury.
Bruch's Adagio can quickly congeal into treacle, but not here, with the pure lyricism of Gomyo's Stradivarius floating over Edo de Waart's molto simpatico orchestra.
An encore of a slow Piazzolla tango, with no seductive rhythms behind it, drew us instead into the allure of Gomyo's sinuous playing.
The evening had opened with the musical bullet train of John Adams' Short Ride in a Fast Machine, de Waart proving himself as astute a driver as he was on this piece's first recording in 1986.
After interval, Beethoven's Seventh Symphony was another revelation, from the almost unbearable suspense of its stealthy introduction to a finale that seemed to shout its welcome to a new Romatic age.
Berlioz, writing on this symphony, made much of its surprises and freshness. On this occasion we had both, in abundance, for a score every bit as visceral and epoch-making in 1813, as Stravinsky's Rite would be a century later.
