The Tayside Symphony Orchestra and conductor Ron Walker have got into the excellent habit of bringing unusual music to their annual Caird Hall concert. On Saturday they continued this, sharing the stage with the Arbroath Instrumental Band and their director Michael Robertson.
The first half started with Rossini's William Tell overture - almost a short symphony in four movements, ending with the rousing galop which many of the audience must have associated with the Lone Ranger programmes of their childhood. The cellos featured strongly in the opening slow mood-setting.
Soloist Euan Crabb continued with enjoyable performances of the Haydn Trumpet Concerto and his own arrangement of Gabriel's Oboe by Ennio Morricone. This last showed that work by specialist cinema composers can work well in concert.
The Band took over after the interval. Four pieces showed the range of their abilities. Perhaps the first and fourth items, excellent as they sounded, were overshadowed by the central pair. First an exhilarating Hungarian-style fantasy with superb cornet solo by Eoin Tonner. Then a large scale threnody on a topical war theme which included a piper at the climax.
The Band topped even these with a scene-stealing theatrical encore - a hilarious cabaret-style arrangement of The Bear Necessities from The Jungle Book.
The concert ended with both groups filling the stage for a performance of The Declaration of Arbroath by Andrew Duncan. With additional bagpipes, choir and narrator (Fiona Ewen) this was a real crowd-pleaser. It sounded superb in the Caird Hall, though smaller halls might struggle to accommodate the sound. It was real Last Night of the Proms stuff, and really should be done at the Royal Albert Hall.