GIVEN that the training of young musicians features so strongly in the programme of Lake District Summer Music, it was fitting that the final concert in this year's festival should be given by the National Youth Orchestra Sinfonietta.

This ensemble, whose members are section leaders from the parent body, the National Youth Orchestra, meets for three days at the beginning of the annual summer course and on this occasion they presented a programme of works for chamber ensemble by (in order) Britten, Lutoslawski, Wagner, Richard Strauss, the 20-year-old, Thomas Hewitt Jones, and Aaron Copland, all under the direction of young conductor Andrew Morley. Andrew is a graduate of Lancaster University and gained his first conducting experience as an undergraduate in the music department under the tutelage of Professor Denis McCaldin.

Andrew gave his young players clear, firm direction and encouraged them to give performances notable for their technical command and musical understanding.

Three of the six pieces on the programme were well-known concert items although more familiar in their full orchestral versions. Copland's ballet score Appalachian Spring (the last to be played) allowed all the luminosity of the composer's fine scoring to shine through and was given a confident performance. The technical demands of Richard Strauss's tone-poem Till Eulenspiegel, in a cut-down' version originally designed for members of the illustrious Vienna Philharmonic, were met with apparent ease by a quintet of clarinet, bassoon, horn, violin and double bass. Wagner's Siegfried Idyll was perhaps the least successful of this trio of works; it had some tentative moments, problems of balance and a lack of warmth in some of the string playing.

Of the other works in the programme, special mention must be made of Thomas Hewitt Jones's Fantasy inspired by the composer's childhood memories of holidays in the Lake District. This was a remarkably accomplished work for the young composer - Organ Scholar of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge - who has already had several works broadcast on radio and TV. The work had a firm sense of direction; Thomas has a fine ear for instrumental sonorities and displayed solid craftsmanship in his instrumentation.

This concert was an outstanding display of youthful talent of a very high order. Long may LDSM continue.

Clive Walkley