By even the most exalted standards the concert given on Monday by the Edinburgh Youth Orchestra was first class in all departments.

They began with the well-known Adagio from Khachaturian’s Ballet Spartacus. Immediately the confidence of the violins struck one, then the superb sound of the oboe, clarinet and flute solos. Working with these, conductor En Shao whipped up a tremendous, emotional, colourful climax.

Next came Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf with Julian Lloyd Webber as narrator. As a nice touch the winds who represent the characters had masks on top of their heads: bird, duck, cat, wolf as one goes down the score. The piece was finely played and characterized. Conductor En Shao got in on the act when the wolf was captured by the tail, shaking the tails of his white tie and tails at Julian Lloyd Webber. It delighted the children in the audience, including the three in front of me who conducted and danced in their seats.

Back in his day job, as Julian Lloyd Webber quipped, he played a beautiful arrangement by David Horne for solo cello and strings of Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’ piano piece Farewell To Stromness. It was an effective and affecting piece, evoking such applause from the audience in Perth Concert Hall that he responded with an encore: the Serenata from Britten’s First cello Suite.

After the interval came the 1919 version of the Suite from Stravinsky’s The Firebird. This work demands the finest and most subtle playing as well as colossal orchestral weight. The sheen of the strings, the excitement of the Danse infernale, the bassoon in the Berceuse, the horn in the Final Tableau all added up to a powerful reading.

Peter Maxwell Davies’ An Orkney Wedding and Sunrise ended the programme in spectacular style. En Shao appeared in a See-You-Jimmy hat with a can of Irn-Bru, then the work started with the sheer virtuosity of the rushing strings. The reel and the reeling followed every bit of Peter Maxwell Davies’ composed drunkenness. As Leader Jessica Hall played her taxing solo superbly before the maudlin collapse and Sunrise with its attendant piper brought this magnificent concert to its end and the well deserved thunderous applause.