The Festival has a reputation of providing top-class orchestral concerts and the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra maintained the tradition with an excellent performance in the Concert Hall. It was memorable in more than one way, with two soloists in particular leading in terms of excellence.

Leader Diomedes Saraza Jr’s performance of Vaughan Williams’ Lark Ascending had a touch of ethereal beauty about it, with a high degree of melodic tenderness. It’s never been one of my favourite works, but his performance elevated it higher in the popularity stakes, matched by a beautifully balanced accompaniment from the orchestra.

If this was melodic brilliance, his encore of Leron, Leron, Sinta – variations on a Philippine folk song – was a blistering display of virtuosic dynamism and technical adeptness.

The second soloist moved the bar of excellence that bit higher. Tchaikovsky’s Rococo Variations is seldom heard but performances like that of Wen-Sinn Yang are even rarer. His was out of this world, top-drawer, peerless – it’s easy to run out of superlatives such was his fantastic display of skill, technique and dazzling finger-board gymnastics. And what’s more, he played it all with a smile on his face, his enjoyment passed over to the audience in no small measures. This was an undoubted treat, more so for any cellists in the audience.

As to the orchestra themselves, theirs was a performance of skill and stamina, peppered with some outstanding individual contributions. For me, the concert started properly with Bizet’s Carmen Suite because the opening work by Jeffrey Ching – Il Maestro di Cappella – was instantly forgettable, or memorable for all the wrong reasons. It was specially commissioned for the orchestra’s current UK tour, but was it a deliberate orchestral spoof or a failed attempt to provide a jocular opening? Whatever his intention, I really couldn’t see the point of it and left me with a sense of bewilderment and unease.

The Bizet, however, was faultless as was the Suite from Swan Lake, one of Tchaikovsky’s most famous scores. The full orchestral sound burst forth in the Act I waltz, mirrored by the softness of the Act II Adagio. Most orchestras would have called a halt by now, but the PPO and conductor Grzegorz Nowak believe in value for money. A high energy Beethoven 5 followed, perhaps one of the best I’ve heard, and they still had enough in the tank to encore with a Dvorak Slavonic dance and a Brahms Hungarian dance.

Quite an evening, with nigh on two-and-a-half hours of performance. The chances of hearing the PPO again are unlikely, but they did leave a lasting impression of a top-class orchestra. They are as good as any you’ll hear and excellent in every single department, as fresh and engaging in the last bar of the Beethoven as they were in the first bar of the Bizet.