A draw, both as a result and an indication of popularity, would be fair following erstwhile King's Lynn Festival artist-in-residence Horacio Franco's contribution to Tuesday's concert and following that of the Red Priest earlier in the week.

By MICHAEL DRAKE

A draw, both as a result and an indication of popularity, would be fair following erstwhile King's Lynn Festival artist-in-residence Horacio Franco's contribution to Tuesday's concert and following that of the Red Priest earlier in the week.

The music these two can conjure from a recorder has to be heard to be believed, and many in the audience at St Margaret's Church did stand to obtain a better view of Franco's flickering fingering in Telemann's Concerto for Recorder and Strings, particularly the extraordinary wanderings of soloist and orchestra away from the home key in the Andante.

Hansemusik, a baker's dozen plus harpsichord from the larger EU Chamber Orchestra, celebrated King's Lynn's links with the Hanseatic movement in north Germany, and soon produced colourful images in

Telemann's Don Quixote's Suite from the gentle awakening to the driving force on the windmill's sails.

Add the purity of tone from Crispian Steele-Perkins as his own joviality echoed the music in a version of a suite from the Water Music, possibly by Handel, for trumpet and strings and that would have been enough musical and technical brilliance to last for some time.

But there was more in Bach's second Brandenburg Concerto, in which the two were joined by violinist leader Istvan Parkanyi and Helen Jahren (oboe) to produce an Allegro and a bright and tightly rhythmic finale in a disciplined performance.

Vivaldi's Concerto for Two Violins, Cello and Strings opened with a continual ebb and flow between splendidly matched soloists and the strings and then moved to a swaying Largo and totally balanced Allegro.

There had been an abundance of entente cordiale.