Review: Putting on the Ritz ****

Bringing a taste of his annual “sold out” London Prom appearances, conductor John Wilson opened this year’s Harrogate International Festival, with a programme to celebrate “Fred Astaire and his Leading Ladies”.

For those who share my passion for those MGM film musicals, two hours of such favourites as Cheek to Cheek, They All Laughed, Puttin’ on the Ritz, A Couple of Swells, Dancing in the Dark and Let’s Kiss and Make up was two hours of foot-tapping bliss.

Wilson has been given the task of reconstructing the lost orchestrations of the original scores and placed these famous songs in context by adding the orchestral sections of Astaire’s dance numbers.

Talking us through the programme, Gary Williams was a vocalist whose style came straight from the era of Berlin, Kern and Gershwin, the three composers who dominated the evening.

He was joined by one of the most familiar faces in the world of musicals, Kim Criswell, whose American accent was ideal.

It was an unusual world for the City of Birmingham Symphony; the strings were sumptuously smooth; the brass and percussion took some time to loosen up.

A full five-star evening, if only the engineers had not used the directional microphones – not kindly disposed to acting-singers.