During his years at the Philadelphia Orchestra, with its famously powerful strings, he developed a sound of his own. One of his most characteristic habits was to adjust the orchestration, and sometimes the substance, with a fearless, Mahler-like confidence in his own ear. Various gongs would enliven climaxes, but overall the result was to enrich and sometimes darken the tone ­ nothing flashy at all.Nobody has the nerve to "interfere with the composer's intentions" now. This concert's programme glossed over the practice, but the Mussorgsky orchestration certainly gave a sense of the way Stokowski heard music. He did his scoring in reaction to the familiar version by Ravel, which he thought made the music sound too French, and indeed the sound is earthier and less vivid. All the way through, there's a stronger sense of fluency and continuity, and while the quicker music lacks sparkle, there are some brilliantly onomatopoeic inventions in response to the pictures' content.

A similar richness informs two of Stokowski's Bach arrangements, the well-known Toccata and Fugue and, even more distinctively,

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a short chorale featuring lyrical cellos, muted brass and harps.The rest of the evening was more or less tangential. With Jean-Yves Thibaudet as pianist, the Ravel concerto was surprisingly over-emphatic and black-and-white. Barber's Adagio, surely a Toscanini piece more than a Stokowski one, was done with dignity rather than emotion. And why Schoenberg, even a tiny fanfare, just because Stokowski used to conduct his music? Didn't he do as much for Shostakovich? Does the BBC ever give up?Robert Maycock. Celeste Dandeker is a dancer ­ or was, because in 1999 she stopped.

Age, she says, was catching up on her body (she's now 49) and besides, she "needed to do one job, not two" and focus on her responsibilities as director. Suzanne Cowan is also a dancer ­ and still is, having joined the group last year after auditioning by video and upping sticks from New Zealand And so is J?Koch, a Swiss, and Pedro Machado, a Brazilian. Celeste Dandeker is a dancer ­ or was, because in 1999 she stopped. Age, she says, was catching up on her body (she's now 49) and besides, she "needed to do one job, not two" and focus on her responsibilities as director.