THE full Lake District Summer Music Festival programme does not get underway until July 29, but as a Festive Prelude we heard a concert by Chetham’s Symphony Orchestra in the Westmorland Hall.

I do not wish to belittle the achievements of any school orchestra – many fine ensembles have developed during the last few years - merely to say that what we heard went far beyond what we expect an average group of secondary school students to achieve. “If you close your eyes, you could imagine you were listening to a professional symphony orchestra,” said one member of the audience. Such was the quality of the sounds produced by this impressive, highly talented, highly disciplined, 100-plus body of young players from one of our distinguished specialist music schools.

One of the aims of LDSM is ‘steering young people towards higher achievement in music,’ and this was firmly demonstrated in the performances of the three large-scale, and very demanding, works on the programme: Richard Strauss’ Suite from Der Rosenkavalier, Liebermann’s Concerto for Flute and Orchestra (1992) and Rachmaninov’s Second Symphony.

The playing throughout the evening was full of energy, technical brilliance and romantic fervour, with musicality in abundance. If any individual is to be singled out, it must be the 17-year old flautist Joshua Batty whose performance of Liebermann’s concerto was breathtakingly brilliant.

Lake District Summer Music runs from July 29-August 15.

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