Judging by the good-sized audience at the first of the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra's Lion Foundation Midwinter Masterpieces series, this is a much appreciated event in the city's musical calendar.
Conductor Alexander Liebreich, using a radically reduced string section in the first half of the programme, revelled in the seemingly unlimited
inventiveness of Haydn's Mourning symphony.
The opening Allegro, in which fiery passions are tempered by bustling counterpoint, was a stylish affair.
Liebreich's attention to phrasing and Haydn's criss-crossing lines ensured that the music pulsated with a zest of its own.
After a carefully deliberated Minuet, the Adagio was taken at quite a clip.
The strings, with Haydn's crucial oboe colouring, made it gracefully clear why this is reputed to have been one of the composer's own favourite slow movements.
Boccherini's Seventh Cello Concerto opened with a rococo haven of trills and gently echoing flutes, all placed perfectly into tonal perspective by Liebreich.
Ashley Brown, playing from memory, was a first-class soloist, with a performance of finesse and infallible musicianship, clearly enjoying the almost chamber music-like intimacy that Boccherini's scoring and Liebreich's conception of the work afforded him.
After interval, using a fuller contingent of strings, Arvo Part's Summa was curiously disappointing.
Running at a little over five minutes, this was a miniature in a line-up of symphonies and concertos.
Yet, without the subtlety of tonal gradation that Part demands, it seemed longer that it should have done.
There was a sense that the audience had been waiting for Schubert's Fifth Symphony. Only seconds into the spirited Allegro, it became evident that had a smaller group of strings been used the piquant woodwind lines have been thrown into sharper relief.
Liebreich took the "con moto" of the Andante con moto to heart and, in doing so, lessened the emotional import of this movement. One awkward transition and occasionally tired string tone didn't help.
However, the Minuet, with one of those Schubertian moments in which the 18th-century dance is almost swept into the ballroom of Johann Strauss, was just the tonic required, and the concert ended with a romp of a Finale.
