WEDNESDAY'S concert opened with Charles Ives’s highly original Second Orchestral Set.

The playing was at once assured in a work I found to be somewhat unsettling and deliciously bonkers. The orchestral texture was often sparse and unrelenting, with traditional songs emerging like musical memories.

Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No.2 opened with fine playing from the bassoons, clarinet and oboes inviting the excellent pianist Andrew Fowles to join the fun. The piano writing is both lyrical and intensely percussive and Mr Fowles’s performance was a delight.

The third movement finale was a vibrant dance. I loved the quirky rhythmic piano playing, dispatched with panache, the vibrant string pizzicatos and the ‘in-joke’ virtuosic piano finger exercises: the work was written for his son, Maxim. But the soul of the work is very much in the central Andante. Here the playing of both soloist and orchestra was just lovely, both tender and always engaging.

I had never heard Debussy’s Danse Sacrée et danse Profane before and, not surprisingly, it turned out to be a real treat. Oliver Wass gave a thoroughly accomplished performance as the harp soloist, the balance between the soloist and string orchestra was perfect.

The concert ended where it began, celebrating America’s rich heritage of traditional song in Copland’s Old American Songs. Although the balance was not always even, baritone Benedict Williams’s performance was excellent and hugely enjoyable, especially in the witty I Bought Me A Cat and the moving ballad Long Time Ago with lovely flute commentary by Grace Chapman. Full honours must go to conductor John Stringer who directed the proceedings with both authority and insight.