Though the concert, supported by a generously illustrated programme booklet, played to a packed house, it ended up doing film music no good. To begin with, Attenborough's introductions were as stiff as a headmaster's end-of-term speech. Written English and spoken English are not the same (you can write "a sentiment which with I concur" but you say "I agree"). Did no one think to pass his text through the BBC copy-editors?Then the music was presented in little gobbets that precluded any genuine sense of atmosphere, making each item a picture postcard - those stabbing string chords from Psycho aren't supposed to generate laughing recognition. And too much of the material was saccharine: only Korngold's overture to The Sea Hawk and George Fenton's excerpts from Cry Freedom really convinced, the Korngold because of its sheer quality (right from those thrilling opening fanfares) and the Fenton because its blend of African rhythm and European melody didn't aspire to symphonic stature - it simply came at you direct.In the end, does it do film music any good to be stuck in this kind of ghetto? If it's good music, it's good enough for a normal concert. Kicking off an evening of Beethoven and Bruckner with 633 Squadron would give it a more exciting start than any number of operatic throat-clearers.The second noble squib went off on Sunday, with Elgar's oratorio The Kingdom.

It never really gets off the ground, Elgar's wordy text helping to truss its feet. Dip into it for any four-minute stretch and it's everything you could expect of Elgar, with moments where his orchestral mastery sends a tingle down the spine - but the full 100 minutes is a long plod. Sir Andrew Davis and the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus lavished every effort on the score but still couldn't wake it up.The revelation of the last few days was the late-night concert by Jeffrey Skidmore's Ex Cathedra, one of the best choirs on the scene, now with its own Baroque Orchestra. A menu of three 17th-century French composers, Charpentier, Bouzignac and Delalande, all dwelling on death, may look grim on paper; in the flesh it was riveting, bringing the discovery that the unknown Guillaume Bouzignac was a radical master of extraordinary harmonic daring.. IS IT a tragedy for a pianist to lose a hand? Not necessarily. Consider the case of Paul Wittgenstein, brother of the philosopher, who developed a brilliant career after losing his right arm in the First World War. Ravel, Korngold, and Prokofiev were just some of the composers who wrote left-hand concertos for him, thus defining single-hand pianism as an art in its own right.

More recently, the British pianist Cyril Smith triumphed over his stroke-paralysed arm by becoming a celebrated three- hand double act with his pianist wife, Phyllis Sellick. Leon Fleischer's recital at the current Sintra Festival was a fascinating reflection of the strength of this tradition. For when this American virtuoso's career was cut short by apparently incurable right-hand RSI, he devoted himself to broadening the left-hand repertoire; when his ailment eventually disappeared, he chose to continue on the left-hand path. The left-hand works he played - by Takacs, Saxton, and Kirchner - showed what rich fruit now grows along that path; his own left-hand arrangement of Brahms's piano arrangement of Bach's second violin Partita was as majestic as the original. The whole excitement of Bach's contrapuntal fantasy lies in the requirement that it should be condensed to the scope of four strings and a bow; by condensing Brahms's piano expansion of it, Fleischer restored that original excitement, and his performance raised the roof.And what a roof.