THIS was the most interesting concert I have attended for a long time and fully consistent with the orchestra's stated aim to perform music which would not normally be heard in Cheltenham.

One of the items was Korngold's Songs of Farewell composed long before the composer moved to Hollywood to write film scores. Soprano Susan Black succeeded magnificently in expressing the subtle contrasts in mood between each of the four, the sense of loss in Requiem being balanced by the lovely orchestral textures in the second song. The third had a haunting, yet troubled, character, while the final song restored some measure of calm.

Familiar songs, composed some 20 years earlier by Richard Strauss, had prepared us for Korngold's aura of late Romanticism. Black's performance was equally impressive in these but there were moments I felt the orchestra needed to be reined in.

There was no holding back the brass section in Shostakovich's Festive Overture which was clearly meant to be noisy and bombastic. While the performance may have sounded a trifle rough in places, Duncan Westerman and his musicians captured admirably the spirit of the work.

The best was kept till the end, and what a magnificent experience Prokofiev's Fifth Symphony proved to be. There was a Shostakovichian austerity about the first movement, but the second sparkled with flashes of the humour and liveliness we associate with the composer.

The jaunty finale abounded in colour and energy and the players seemed to be having a ball as they immersed themselves in this melodious melange.

Roger Jones