There’s a real hubbub in the hall as some 200 keyed-up, clued-up musicians keenly await the upbeat from conductor Kevin Smith. Those trusty rusties and their professionally playing mentors from the BSO filled the flat-floored concert hall for their 12th annual collaboration.

This year’s theme saw them ‘Go to the Movies’ and the big sound of The Big Country by Jerome Moross set the stage for a classically driven film thread.

Walt Disney’s Fantasia did favours for the masters with Dukas’ Sorcerer’s Apprentice bouncing rhythms generating the required calamitous mayhem and, if not quite pitch perfect everywhere, a superb selection from Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite. Then there’s the true terror in a tutti orchestra of two hundred spending A Night on the Bare Mountain, Mussorgsky’s brilliantly scary score conducted by Rui Pinheiro with finely played solos for clarinet and flute.

The strings propensity for harmonious homogeneity was evident in the Adagio from Mahler’s Symphony No.5 conducted by Ian Pillow. The moving melody captured the tender emotions with touching finesse.

Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries and Walton’s Henry V Suite gave the brass section plenty of headroom and a rousing encore, dedicated to Chris Guy, Goodwin’s fabulous 633 Squadron made it a wrap!