Conductor Martin Binks and the LSO returned to Ilkley for their traditional annual fundraiser for the NSPCC with a typically Binksian programme. The evening comprised a Verdi overture, some Massenet ballet music, excerpts from Mendelssohn’s music for A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a Telemann Concerto, and Tchaikovsky’s Pathetique Symphony. Six pieces if you count Binks’s own ornate arrangement of God Save the Queen which invariably opens every LSO concert.

The orchestra’s performance of Verdi’s Overture to the Sicilian Vespers was superlative in every respect. Clarity of textures, rich dramatic colouring and subtle grading of dynamics reminding the listener just how loudly this orchestra is capable of playing – and how softly.

The rhythmical motif based on the main theme and played by the high strings emerged as a beautifully floated pianissimo. After Verdi, the large forces remained in place for the Telemann Concerto for three trumpets creating a swimmy, overblown sound.

Perhaps our ears are nowadays simply too accustomed to incisive period instrument performances of the baroque repertoire. Mendelssohn’s music for Shakespeare’s fairy-tale comedy suffered from heavy woodwind; the Scherzo sounded leaden-footed. A suite from Massenet’s ballet music for Le Cid, on the other hand, demonstrated this conductor’s well known empathy with the French repertoire in a buoyant, sparkling performance of these popular numbers.

Tchaikovsky’s outpouring of grief and despair in his Pathetique Symphony showed the orchestra at its very finest. The bleakness of the opening solo bassoon and the sighing strings in the first movement’s nostalgic main theme made a lasting impression.

LSO brass played with a bite that you could almost feel in the stirring march and in those violent climactic outbursts of the first movement and towards the end of the symphony. Binks’s attention to colouring and shading of dynamics combined with the orchestra’s ability to realise his interpretative points produced a blistering performance.

The upcoming season marks Martin Binks's 40th year as conductor of the Leeds Symphony Orchestra. Long may he continue to be the guiding light of this venerable institution.