New Zealand Symphony Orchestra at the Auckland Town Hall

By WILLIAM DART

French conductor Yan Pascal Tortelier has a suave platform manner; he chats easily, sans microphone, and asks us to believe that a blissful yachting experience on Auckland harbour led him to tweak the NZSO's Friday programme.

In fact, as he eventually admitted, Berlioz' Le Corsaire is simply superior to the Les Francs-Juges which it replaced, and the orchestra then proceeded to reveal just why.

How easy the players made it for us to imagine sails unfurling, pirates on the rigging and clashing swords.

After this, Saint-Saens' Fourth Piano Concerto was a butterfly of a piece, sensitively pinned down by soloist Stephen Hough. But what a harmony of contrasts the composer has laid out, from its cautious opening pages (with sforzandi discreet to the point of non-existence on this occasion) to a fiery Finale.

The frolicsome allegro vivace was a frisson-inducing exercise in high camp, with Hough and Tortelier tempting the musicians to some arch and stylish fun.

Hough's encore, a dexterous Jeunes Filles au Jardin by the Spanish composer Mompou, was a discreet reminder that the English pianist returns this week for a solo recital.

After interval, Tchaikovsky's Sixth Symphony was driven by Tortelier's attention to the whole issue of rhythm, from the dotted figures that marched away in the first movement to some possessed spiccato bowing in the third.

The Finale touched the heart more for not lagging in pace, dispersing its tragedy over inexorable timpani rolls, although a delinquent cellphone did its best to break some of the spell.

Saturday's programme set off with Dukas Polyeucte, a rather satiated affair, as one would imagine a French Wagnerian might concoct.

Again, this sumptuous score was all the more persuasive for having its tempo spruced up, with Tortelier shaving two minutes off his 1993 recording of the piece.

With Debussy's Nocturnes it was not simply the alluring sound that made it memorable, but Tortelier's finesse in allowing the music the breaths that the composer stipulates.

The final Sirenes, with enticing vocals from the women of Tower Voices New Zealand, and the players creating a textbook of orchestral wizardry, was captivating.

The Prelude to Mussorgsky's Khovanshchina proved the perfect appetiser for the evening's piece de resistance, Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring.

The classic ballet balanced cool restraint with the wildest savagery. Stark beauties were revealed in the introductions to both parts of the score; the second particularly so with its veiled, mysterious strings and implacable quavers.

Though the Adolescent's Dance may not have delivered the punch some might have expected (one was more caught by woodwind delicacies here), the Glorification ushered in an appropriately glorious and primal energy that would carry through to the final chord of the work.