Review: Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra ***

Let loose that massive beast of an organ in Leeds Town Hall to add on the excesses of the Saint-Saens Third Symphony, and the score's thunderous finale goes clean off the Richter scale.

It had the redoubtable Simon Lindley at the console to put the instrument through its paces as it roared or quietly simmered as was required, the ending as grandiose as you will ever wish to hear.

It came as the conclusion to a concert whose other outstanding attribute was the playing of the young Freddy Kempf in Ravel's Piano Concerto. Full of sparkling brilliance and abounding in subtle nuances, he drove the finale forward at a tempo that was about as fast as human fingers could achieve, and posed more than a few problems for the orchestra.

As time is money in today's orchestral world, it may have been a concert staged with modest preparation, for while nothing went amiss through the evening, the eyes of the orchestra were so locked into the music that you felt they needed another rehearsal under their young Australian conductor, Matthew Coorey.

That particularly applied to the opening work, Debussy's Marche Ecossaise sur un Theme Populaire, which required greater love and attention in its phrasing and structure.