ONE of Scottish Opera's early ambitions was to stage The Fair Maid of Perth in Perth. The opportunity still knocks, but it was Owain Arwel Hughes and the RSNO who faced the challenge by performing the orchestral suite from Bizet's opera in the closing concert of this year's Perth Festival. Though infinitely less problematic than the complete work, these four short Scenes Bohemiennes served as savoury appetisers, even if the conductor's hand lacked the Beechamesque lightness of touch such music requires. But if the exhilarating gear-change halfway through the finale went for nothing, the combination of harp and woodwind timbres earlier in the suite was beautifully conveyed. At the very least, Perth Festival should now be contemplating a complete concert performance of Bizet's delectable, neglected opera.

Instead, on this occasion, we were treated to Saint-Saens's Organ Symphony, another old Beecham favourite which, in Perth City Hall, enjoyed the benefit of a real built-in pipe organ, rather than an electronic substitute. Whatever the present state of the instrument (an electronic alternative was visibly on stand-by), George McPhee drew from it the right sort of chords in the finale, and more or less the right blend of tone with the orchestra.

Hughes conducted a stirring, energetic performance, but the evening was not wholly a French victory. As the programme's dark, melancholy centrepiece, Elgar's Cello Concerto was played by Raphael Wallfisch without a trace of ostentation or exaggeration, but with the quiet, self-communing placing of chords, plucking of strings,

and shaping of lines that

showed a true Elgarian to be at the helm.