BISHOP Auckland Music Society's concert by the Aurora Wind Ensemble proved perhaps the most engaging and interesting of the four given so far this season in the throne room of Auckland Castle.

Here were five young wind players, full of enthusiasm and in fine form, with an interesting and varied programme: first a rather jolly Quintet in E Flat by Antonin Reicha to establish some polished classical credentials before turning to the Gallic wit of Jaques Ibert’s Trois Pieces Brèves and the rather more straightforward and lightness of Gabriel Pierné's Pastorale.

The ensemble caught the Peasant Songs by Bela Bartok with an ease that projected both the open spaces of the Hungarian Plain and the sheer energy of the regions folklore.

Bizet's Carmen Suite may be operatic in its genre, but this suite conveyed all the spirit, colour and life of the original, as did Percy Grainger's jolly, jovial arrangement of the English folk song, Lisbon, while a near contemporary wind trio, Von der Ratte, vom Biber und vom Bären (concerning the rat, the beaver and the bear) for clarinet, bassoon and horn, by Gottfried von Einem, was quirky, elliptical and wholly engaging in its descriptive dissonances.

Finally, the most recent of all, Jim Parker's Boulevard (2006) gave us a gently effective urban landscape, with chattering ladies, street band and a gently expiring organ grinder. As encore, we got a slick arrangement of The Blaydon Races though, geographically, Wor Nanny's a Mazer or Lambton Worm might have been more County Durham orientated.

The next concert in the series will be on Wednesday, October 1, in the throne room by recorder virtuoso Jill Kemp and pianist Helen Reid, who also give workshops in two local schools.