It's the medication prescribed and delivered by our professional orchestra and, after another demoralising summer's weather, here they are heading off not only Recession Blues but the cooler days of late summer.

I don't use the word 'autumnal' until October. But by then Nicola Benedetti will be here on the 11th day to warm up the Tenth-Month chills with Glazunov and Massenet. Glazunov and Massenet? They did not compose anything together. What's going on?

Aha. Is this a credit crunch-busting offer of two pieces by a soloist? Yes. And we had one in this concert, too, courtesy of WSO conductor John Gibbons' resourceful programming in offering of "Parisian Gems".

Idil Biret is a small bundle of a powerhouse pianist, Turkey's biggest artistic female export, world–acclaimed, Paris Conservatoire trained under Nadia Boulanger. She came not only armed with Saint-Saens' fireball Second Piano Concerto but with Fauré's Ballade for Piano and Orchestra, that she told me afterwards she was playing live for the first time, and which she loves for its charm.

Needless to say, it was already committed to memory. There must be more musical dots per brain cell among her grey matter than several average women put together. She specialises in composers who write tons and tons of notes — Chopin and Rakhmaninov — and she oozes barrels of more by including stuff in her repertoire like Cesar Franck's Symphonic Variations which, like the Fauré, is in the terrifying black-notes key of F#.

She has also recorded all Brahms' piano catalogue and Beethoven's entire 32 Sonatas, so she packs physical strength with lyricism. Out it came in the busy and entertaining, sometimes tumultuous, sometimes harum-scarum Saint-Saens, engrossing the viewer with plenty of crossed hands and vehement chords.

And the generosity of the concert she gave, and of course her virtuosity, were fully appreciated, saluted and applauded by the crowd. Even more so after she returned after the interval to play the Ballade.

It is becoming a knowledgeable crowd, thanks to Gibbons' nurturing of them over his 10-year WSO tenure with his pre-performance tip-giving to the audience from the podium.

It's not often Haydn enters his programmes but he and Mozart bookended the afternoon, which also contained Delibes' Pizzicato dance from his Sylvia ballet to complete five works with a Parisian connection. It was with Haydn's 85th Symphony, one of his Paris six, that Gibbons began the new season. And Mozart's rousing "Paris" Symphony, No 31, with its clarinets, trumpets and drums, that clinched the occasion.

Rightly, Gibbons noted how audiences take Haydn for granted. Don't, he warned: listen for the tricks and fun going on inside the music.

Haydn has it all. Noble and tender sentiment, power, humour, melody, dancing, fun, a spontaneous intellectual rigour, a sincere spiritual dimension — plus a mastercourse in orchestration invented by himself in splendid isolation at Esterhazy Palace to which, and to whom, in his lifetime, a gowned Oxford University doffed its mortar with its own honorary degree.

We are talking about one of the classical Top 10 great creators. Hear Paul McCreish's edition of The Creation and I defy you to refute this. And orchestral players, particularly string players, who approach him complacently do so at their peril.

Which is why, if Gibbons is tempted to explore more of these Paris six in future seasons, it will add further dimension to the WSO and an extended authority. It was not there yet in No 84, La Reine, but the shoots springing green sounded strong.

So I want to be around if eventually, perhaps, they simply knock out their audience with that explosive Symphony No 82, The Bear — and conclude a concert with it, instead of starting one with Haydn.

A safe old warm-up act Haydn is not. And whatever Gibbons may choose next, the prospect is rich. The Paris sextet also includes an exhilarating one in D, an alternately bracing and beautiful one in A, and an altogether ravishing one in Eb.

The audience have been pampered by the luxurious and classy style of the new WSO season brochure, and now the concert programmes match it. Real love, care, and pride, as well as respect, is being shown to this conductor and his orchestra by Worthing's theatre marketing.

More luxury and classy style is to come from the platform. We know that now.


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