WITH the closure of Middlesbrough Town Hall for major refurbishment, the Classical Concert series has been redistributed to other venues.

Chamber concerts are being taken "on the road" to places perhaps better suited to a smaller ensemble, with the first in Middlesbrough Reference Library, repeated the following evening in the music room of Preston Park Museum.

Despite it being one of the coldest nights of the winter so far, the Preston Park concert attracted a full house where staff made every effort to ensure everyone had an enjoyable evening.

Cold as it was, the heating was full on, which with the large crowd ensured the room – chilly at first – gradually became cosier.

Welcome as this was, it clearly produced some problems for the string players with their intonation, especially in the opening piece, but additional tuning between movements in the later pieces improved things.

The programme was particularly attractive, beginning with Richard Strauss’s Prelude to his opera Capriccio (for string sextet) with its characteristic richness of sound.

In Mozart’s String Quartet No. 14, in G major, K387, I found the slow movement particularly effective but the highlight for me was Brahms’s 2nd Sextet in G major, Op. 36.

The combination of two violins, two violas and two cellos is such a pleasing blend and the contrasts of passion and whimsy, of complexity and lightness, were well conveyed by the Sinfonia’s ensemble.

The next concert is by the Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra in an all-Beethoven programme (replacing the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra) on Thursday, February 18; details at middlesbroughtheatre.co.uk; box office 01642 729729.

Peter Bevan