Northern Sinfonia, Middlesbrough Town Hall

The reason was probably a combination of rather more spring-like weather and an attractive programme of popular music.

First of these was the neoclassical charms of Prokofiev’s 1st Symphony, The Classical, op 25, with its blend of old and new allied to the composer’s gently ironic humour. Under the direction of the Sinfonia’s American guest conductor, Erik Nielsen, it began with a brightly hard-edged opening allegro then settled down to the more relaxed flow of the following larghetto and gavotte before the fun of the final allegro.

Guest soloist of the evening, the Beijing-born guitarist Xuefei Yang, fully lived up to the quality she displayed on her Harrogate Festival debut two years ago with a sparkling performance of Joaquin Rodrigo’s popular Concierto de Aranajuez. She projected the very essence of Spain with eloquent subtlety, notably in the central adagio’s quiet reflection and air of scented nocturnal peace, and in the final movement’s echoing of an earlier time. This fine performance was marred only by the occasional electronic malfunction of the amplifier.

The second half of the evening, beautifully played by the Sinfonia, opened with the orchestra very much at home in the rich, gentle flow of Rachmaninov’s Vocalise op 34/14.

My one quibble was that the Rachmaninov and the two other pieces, Dvorak’s Romance in F minor, op 11 for violin and orchestra, with Bradley Creswick as orchestra leader and fluent soloist, and the final offering of Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings, op 43, were too similar in content, offering a pleasant, refined, if somewhat soporific, conclusion to the evening.

The final concert in the town hall orchestral season on May 20 sees a welcome return visit by the Moscow State Symphony Orchestra, with conductor Pavel Kogan and pianist Igor Tchetuev offering an all-Russian programme of Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov and Rimsky Korsakov.