FORGET the red roses. Forget the chocolates. And forget the card. For any East Lancashire lad with an ounce of romance about him there was only one way to celebrate St Valentine's day with his young lady - watching the Hall in Blackburn's King George's Hall.

It was Russian night; a night of high "tingle factor" as conductor Owain Arwel Hughes promised. We were not disappointed - from the sweeping opening of Khachaturian's adagio from the ballet Spartacus to Rimsky-Korsakov's symphonic suite Shhrazade.

The finale throws up just about every trick in the book with the strings doing most things with their instruments short of actually bashing each other on the head. Great fun!

The highlight, however, was Rachmaninov's second piano concerto - the theme music from the 1945 classic weepie Brief Encounter. I wouldn't have been surprised to see Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard wandering into the hall to escape Northgate's icy chill.

Soloist Philip Martin was as stylish as ever. Fast and furious one moment; the next poised, waiting . . . for what seemed an age before launching out again. High drama wrapped in lightning and rolling thunder. Just one sour note - and not, I hasten to add, from the Hall. It came from down below; the monotonous thump-thump-bass of modern-day pop music which seeped through from Blakey's as the night wore on.

Lynn Fletcher, the pretty young first violin, didn't bat an eyelid as she delighted the packed hall with her solo spots in the Baghdad Festival finale. Here was sublime; below was cor blimey . . .

The Hall are back in Blackburn on March 21 with French Impressions and on May 2 with the Enigma Variations. Book now!

HAROLD HEYS

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.