Star rating: ***

If the involvement of famous names accounted for the popularity of the first lunchtime theatre of Oran Mor's new season, the close-to-full house at the first of the Concert, Cocktail and Canape early evening performances later the same day was more a word-of-mouth triumph. That, perhaps, and a sensibly popular work at the heart of the first programme.

Orchestra leader Justine Watts was not just the soloist for Vivaldi's Four Seasons, but our guide to the pictures the composer scored in what she described as a tone poem many years ahead of its time.

Her commentary was part of a noticeably enhanced commitment to presentation, recognising, perhaps, that not all of the people coming to these concerts are necessarily regular concert-goers.

Those for whom these rush hour concerts are a new experience are hearing quality music-making with all the required ingredients: a harp joining the string ensemble for Vaughan Williams's opening Fantasia on Greensleeves, and a harpsichordist in the Vivaldi.

If it would not be difficult to find a more authentic or tonally precise Four Seasons, there was no faulting the warmth and enthusiasm of the playing of Watts and her colleagues, and conductor Peter Cynfryn Jones kept the suite bounding along melodiously. With most of the band drawn from the BBC SSO, it is perhaps not too fanciful to suggest that they feel happily at home so near their old Queen Margaret Drive stamping ground.

The more adventurous programming to come in this season was hinted at in the relative rarity of the closing piece, Villa Lobos's Bach-inspired Bachianas Brasilerias No 9. Next Monday, Watts is again the soloist in Vaughan Williams's violin concerto, bracketed by Tippett and Janacek.