Looking around the 300-seat Eugene Goossens Hall in the ABC Centre at this concert there were not many empty places, proof that even on a cold night with key sports fixtures on televison, people will still turn out for a night of fine music played by an excellent band.

The Metropolitan Orchestra – TMO for short – is celebrating its 10th year since being founded by its dynamic artistic director and chief conductor Sarah-Grace Williams. A not-for-profit registered musical charity, TMO is one of Australia’s busiest privately run orchestras putting on five major concerts a year as well as interactive cushion concerts for young people and special events, including a Pacific Island cruise on which it accompanies some of the country’s top vocal talent.

For their fourth concert of the season, Fever, Williams chose a troika of Russian composers and works that highlight the considerable depth of talent in an orchestra which boasts well over 100 musicians on its books. This was nowhere more evident than in Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s Capriccio Espagnole, a sizzling showreel dedicated to the composer’s favourite musicians in the St Petersburg Imperial Opera Orchestra.

TMO concertmaster Victoria Jacono-Gilmovich got a couple of solo passages, admirably handled, and there were excellent contributions...