John Gibbons' programme he entitled Spring Awakenings cast a quite different spell, with just one mainstream European work, towards which moved four forerunning 20th century works, all by English-speaking composers.

It was a highly attractive programme, even better in the final hearing than in the anticipation, and, because it was not serving up dishes tasted repeatedly by WSO fans down the years, it is more likely to stay in the memory.

Gibbons' concept needed to make no concessions to a need for instant excitement, or even big stirrings. Spring Awakenings awoke like an unfolding flower, working spells on ears arriving for the event fresh as turned soil. The process of the music working on our consciousness and receptivity was an entirely natural one. No big chords to arrest the attention. The music, like spring, would steal in and thereon grow and expand.

Only 13 instruments took the stage: the original scoring of Aaron Copland's American ballet score, Appalachian Spring. Nine string players, a pianist, and three delicious winds - Jon Carnac's clarinet, Monica McCarron's flute and Gavin McNaughton's bassoon.

Probably never heard before in this hall, that in itself was an excitement aplenty. A springtime marriage and thoughts of homemaking, gently joyous, essentially familial feelings, swelling towards the dance-tune, now hymn, known in some quarters as Lord of the Dance. A touchingly intimate experience, just as much for performers as for listeners.

Then two horns, oboe, fuller strings and woodwind joined the others for a second, intimate view of spring from the extreme privacy of Frederick Delius' unmistakeable On Hearing The First Cuckoo In Spring. Private, yes. Yet universal, or at least wherever in the world cuckoos haunt.

This may not have been an Assembly Hall 'first' but it might just as well have been. The sense of first hearing, first shoots, first buds, was unavoidable because of Delius' famously unique and visionary use of the orchestra, reproduced confidently by the WSO.

Carnac was given an almost mickey-taking solo bow at the end by Gibbons for his varied use of his two-note cuckoo call.

Next came what may have been the first concert suite performance from a familiar recent film score, Ladies In Lavender by English composer Nigel Hess. The story tells of an eligible Polish castaway, Andrea, with a hidden talent for solo violin playing, who is washed up ashore and into the 1930s lives of two Cornish spinster sisters.

Orchestral leader Julian Leaper, as violin soloist, brought a mellow and contained feel to often lush, highly emotional music that told us his view of it was of a lyrical but bitter-sweet story.

Even in his Fantasy for Violin and Orchestra, the first number of six, he allowed himself only token showiness, and his violin, set modestly back in the balance we heard in the concert hall setting, not in the recording studio for the film, his role was sometimes of a slightly introspective storyteller and commentator rather than extrovert attention seeker.

By now a harpist had joined us and Leaper, Carnac and she, Isobel Frayling Cork, combined touchingly in the second item, Teaching Andrea. Leaper had gentle nuance and tenderness to express in Olga, then some rustic stuff in the Polish Dance (which brought spontaneous applause from the audience).

Soothing piano and harp, plus clarinet again, joined him for the penultimate A Broken Heart. Then the oboe entered with the heart-string pulling pay-off in the closing number, the film title.

It is a score of now, a concoction of the musical language we yearn to hear in a popular romantic film, a great many people will be disappointed to hear they missed this performance and its knowing inclusion by Gibbons added, for the listeners there, to the sense of loss one feels at the swift passing of a shortlived and under-appreciated spring.

After the interval came Vaughan Williams' Five Variants On Dives And Lazarus, for strings and harp only. Classic FM has done most to bring this gem into common appreciation and enjoyment - in the wake, of course, of its permanent espousal of the Tallis Fantasia, a work from the same tree stem.

And, if the WSO did not quite give full passionate rein to the climax before the final restatement of this memorable folk-hymn tune, the effect within Gibbons' overall programme was still of spring reaching a rich and climactic fullness.

I hope its inclusion leads to more Vaughan Williams from Gibbons, whose easy affinity with English composers has already homed in rewardingly on Elgar in his WSO career. We have already, indeed, had from these forces already RVW's Symphony No 5.

After the frequent langour and restraint of the previous pieces, the WSO upper strings were slightly caught napping at the beginning of the two youthfully vigorous outer movements as the Fifth Symphony of Schubert upliftingly clinched the intent of this programme.

At last, real warmth in the sun, and the full bloom and scent of le Printemps was in celebration. Gibbons' two horns, David Lee and Jane Hanna excelled themselves in this, as the young hearts thoughts turned inevitably to the thing spring inspires most easily in men and women.

An oustanding programme, then, and one Gibbons can provide in various forms on the same theme in future, especially for those who missed this one and regretted it.

The WSO season concludes on April 6 (2.45pm) with Russian violin sensation Boris Brovtsyn (he of Elgar and Tchaikowsky converto celebrity here) in Lalo's Symphonie Espagnol and Waxman's Carmen Fantasie.

Two soloist works? Buy one, get one free, and it won't be tatty giveaway music, either, but possibly this artiste's most bristling and uninhibited offering yet to WSO followers. Be prepared to stand and applaud.

Tchaikowsky's Fourth Symphony ends it.

Box Office: 01903 206206. Under-16s tickets are just £6.