Music enthusiast Barry Vercoe attended the fifth Tauranga Musica concert on Sunday. His review follows.

Christchurch Symphony Orchestra was in town on Sunday to thrill a bumper audience at the fifth Tauranga Musica concert at Pyes Pa.

The ‘E' Brass Quintet brought a mix of works spanning five centuries, some of them originals, as well as other transcriptions.

An opening fanfare by Paul Dukas – think ‘The Sorcerer's Apprentice' – gave an immediate sense of the power of brass.

‘Partita for Brass' by New Zealand composer John Ritchie was convincing proof that delicate rhythms tossed at an ungainly tuba can sometimes be returned with flair and grace.

Transcriptions had a harder time. Samuel Barber's familiar ‘Adagio for Strings' – so full of heart-wrenching pathos – was suddenly without feeling in this brass version, and even lacked the clinching final note.

Bach's chorale prelude ‘Out of the Depths I Cry to Thee'also lacked the pathos any organist would have injected to override the opening forte dynamic.

Yet familiarity always triumphs, and in Rimsky Korsakov's ‘Scheherazade' the tuba was key to bringing prince and princess together.

Equally satisfying was the traditional, ‘I'm Gonna Sing, I'm Gonna Dance'.

But a brass transcription of Henry Mancini's catchy ‘Pink Panther' is what finally brought smiles to Sunday's dreary weather.

The last of this wonderful series is October 16 at Tauranga Park Auditorium, Pyes Pa.