Firecracker finale, with flashes of brilliance AS the classical music scene winds down for another year and the January hiatus looms, the MSO's penultimate 2013 concert provided audiences with a dazzling firecracker farewell. The evening's only disappointment came early, with a rendition of Stravinsky's gripping Symphony of Psalms that was positively flaccid. Czech conductor Jakub Hrusa failed to convey the music's structure, while the ordinarily animated MSO Chorus appeared lost in space. Fine orchestral contributions helped provide some bite but, overall, there was a dearth of both intensity and interpretative insight. Dullness was swiftly cast aside, German virtuoso Christian Tetzlaff taking to the stage for a spirited performance of Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto. Tetzlaff demonstrates the classic hallmarks of a central European technique, his fingering lively yet firmly placed, vibrato bright and varied. Devoid of theatrical sways and superfluities, he is all energy and expression concentrated where it matters. These attributes gave depth to the opening movement, occasional intonation lapses in the upper register taking little from a performance of thrilling abandon and intensity. Rounding out the first movement with a gypsy fiddler's flair, Tetzlaff's gentle account of the Andante was supremely musical, tinged with tenderness and melancholy while avoiding excessive sentimentality.The finale was less convincing, Tetzlaff outpacing his accompaniment and, in the process, routinely compromising phrasing and articulation. Hrusa's ensuing interpretation of Dvorak's New World Symphony was rousing and refreshing, drawing out neglected melodic and orchestration details and giving full dramatic weight to the score's strategic silences. Hrusa created vivid folk soundscapes and transformed stirring musical passages into dynamic forces of nature, swirling the upper string lines into turbulent wind gusts and directing full brass entries to rise as a fury of tectonic thrusts. The horns were in brilliant form all evening, while Michael Pisani's lyrically arching cor anglais solo in the second movement was indicative of an exceptional wind section that is flourishing in Hamer Hall's revitalised acoustic. Melbourne Symphony Orchestra Hamer Hall, Melbourne. December 5.