ONE of the best things about this annual concert and each year’s Associated Board High Scorers’ Concert is the opportunity to hear the improvements made by individual students and to assess the overall state of the musical future of the Tees Valley area.

If the Darlington and Northallerton Rotary Clubs’ annual gala concert in Northallerton’s parish church was anything to go by, the future is, in a word, bright – very bright.

The standard was laid down by the very first performer of the night, a diminutive tenyear- old from Teesside, Gi Dong Park, whose playing of the first movement of Vivaldi’s A minor violin concerto had excellent execution, flair and polish for one so young; even more remarkable is the fact that he also plays piano and percussion, and is a member of the National Children’s Orchestra.

A string of other young talents followed in ascending order of age: pianists Amy Cornforth, Liam Walker, Benjamin Bielby and Harriet Bradshaw, the latter with an imaginative and atmospheric Nocturne by Debussy. Violinists included Liam Noonan, negotiating the tricky little turns of Fritz Kreisler’s Tempo di Menuetto and Harry Evans’ quirky and perky Fruhlingswaltz (Spring Waltz) by Shostakovich.

There were flautists: Stephanie Libby, playing Bach’s Adagio and allegro from the E minor Sonata, and Phillippa Peall with the Gallic charm of Widor’s Flute Sonata. Finally, to round off the evening, cellist Jeremy Evans was richly sonorous and secure in the first movement of Beethoven’s 4th cello Sonata.

Dave Robson