The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra at the Auckland Town Hall

The timing couldn't have been better for the NZSO, launching its 2005 Auckland season just hours after announcing it will be going to the London Proms and Aichi World Expo later this year.

With a noted international soloist, two New Zealand works and a bill that included Tchaikovsky and Brahms, it was sad that attendance was not what it might have been, particularly on Saturday.

Peter Donohoe is a titan amongst pianists and, a few thorny octaves aside, the Englishman impressed his personality on Brahms' First Concerto, effortlessly projecting into the auditorium, with trills that came all the way from the upper arm. All was not so tidy for Tchaikovsky's Second Concerto on Saturday, especially in its first movement. Most memorable was the Andante, with Donohoe in perfect harmony alongside violinist Vesa-Matti Leppanen and cellist David Chickering.

Encores were generous. Friday's had been Tchaikovsky's dashing Dumka; on Saturday soloist and orchestra gave us a Henry Litolff Scherzo that was anxiety-creating in its speed, and threatened more than once to derail itself.

Chris Cree Brown's Forgotten Memories, the first of the orchestra's 2005 commissions, is a meditation on the hazy border between present and past, like the composer's 2002 chamber work, Memories Apart.

The structure was lucid, marked by a returning Bartokian theme and, lest memories get too serious, a cheeky, off-kilter march.

Violist Vyvyan Yendoll was a noble soloist, sympathetically supported by his orchestral colleagues.

John Rimmer's At the Appointed Time brought back other memories of the heady 70s, when our composers were discovering the sheer joy of exploring new and vibrant soundworlds. Rimmer deals out wild orchestral rushes, bevies of bells and vibes, velvety blankets of Penderecki chords and, in a superb performance crisply marshalled by Judd, every glint of colour pierced through.

Finally, the symphonies. On Friday, Tchaikovsky's Little Russian proved just why it is a second-tier work. This is ballet music, most effective when Judd and his players let all the Cossacks out of the closet for the whirlwind Finale.

Saturday's envoi was Debussy's Images. This unsettling work toys with preconceptions, perceptions and memories. The abstract and colouristic share pages with ruminations on folk-tunes; at times you fear Chabrier's Espana might even make a forced entry. The orchestra presented one of the composer's most poetically charged scores with a balance of finesse and virtuosity that was breathtaking.