THE Royal Concert Hall has been open for 13 years. In that time, myriad top-drawer orchestras have graced its stage. Seldom, however, has there been such a display of corporate musicianship and gloriously sophisticated orchestral playing as produced last night by the great Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra with its music director Herbert Blomstedt.

Even the hardest heart must have found the super-refined playing of Brahms's Haydn Variations irresistible. It's not remotely fanciful to suggest that you could feel the 260 years of history that permeates this wonderful orchestra welling up from the soul of the band, with its deep, polished string sound, its unhurried, unforced playing, and the rich, mature, warm tone that bathes the orchestral sound with a glow that touches the spirit. It's actually tempting to suggest that, with the animal dynamism of former chief conductor, Kurt Masur, now removed from the orchestra, what we heard last night was more the natural, intrinsic sound of the band that was cultivated first by Mendelssohn, and has been nurtured for more than 150 subsequent years by other

wondrous hands and minds.

Even in a display piece such as Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra there was not a hint of the Gewandhaus showing off; seldom has virtuosity been so so comprehensively at the service of the music, whether in the impassioned slow movement, the ribald wit of the Intermezzo, or the breathtaking whirlwind of the finale. A wondrous night of music-making, though the name on everybody's lips was that of the amazing

19-year-old German violinist, Julia Fischer, making her Scottish debut with a spellbinding performance of Dvorak's Violin Concerto that made a strong case for a neglected piece, and introduced a very special musician of rare calibre.