Close your eyes and you could be listening to an orchestra of seasoned professionals, bristling with bushytailed enthusiasm.
Open your eyes and you would see rows and rows of fresh young faces, members of the CBSO Youth Orchestra which is just one year old.
Sunday's concert came at the end of an intensive half-term of coaching from players in the parent orchestra and conductor Paul Daniel.
The result was stunning, the afternoon beginning with an account of John Adams' The Chairman Dances of which any ensemble would have been proud. Concentration throughout its desperately searching motor-rhythms was intense and tight, balances were finely judged by Daniel and dynamic hairpins were naturally shaded.
Joanna MacGregor, soloist in Bartok's Piano Concerto no.3, enjoyed a wonderful rapport with these youngsters.
Her reading was deftly characterised, combining exactly the right amount of ironic detachment with rich emotional chording in this smiling, interactive collaboration under Daniel's galvanising direction.
Tchaikovsky's Pathetique Symphony did betray a little of these admirable young players' inexperience and perhaps exhaustion at the end of a gruelling week. There were problems of intonation in the depths which this suicidal work plumbs, and ensemble was not always perfect.
But there were riches galore in this interpretation of issues which were probably way beyond the ken of this amazing bunch of fledgling musicians.
Suzanne Clare's solo clarinet contributions were outstanding, as were the sturdy, confidently-toned horns, and the strings sang and surged magnificently.
Christopher Morley
