The Life of Mozart,Bolton Millennium Festival Choir and Orchestra, Albert Halls, Bolton MOZART'S reputation as the greatest of classical composers seemed justified on Saturday night when a talented group of singers and musicians presented a representative selection of his work as a valuable contribution to Bolton Festival 2000.

Robert Aston, the inspirational conductor of the Choir and Orchestra, had written a script about Mozart's life and work that put words in the mouth of the composer's wife, Constanze, who was played with warmth by Elizabeth Tatman, chairman of Bolton Festival Committee.

Constanze presented the programme as though speaking from Heaven, and the script, together with Mrs Tatman's light touch, will surely have helped to popularise the composer.

Mrs Tatman had also made excellent period costumes for herself and the two young musicians who played Mozart in his younger days.

The boy Mozart, played by 11-year-old Victor Khadem, from Uppermill, opened the programme with the first movement (allegro) from the Piano Sonata in D. Victor proved a talented and confident pianist.

Led by Gerald Hopkin, the strings of the orchestra did justice to the changing moods of the Salzburg Symphony (Divertimento) in D.

Nicholas Rimmer, who is aged 18 and lives near Wigan, played the teenage Mozart and in the testing Variations for Piano, Unser dummer Pobel Meint, gave clear evidence of why he was a piano finalist in the BBC's Young Musician 2000.

Jane Hyde, the Burnley soprano who is head of drama at a Tyldesley school and this year directed the Bartered Bride for Bolton's Opera 74, was an expressive soloist in one of Mozart's vespers, Laudate Dominum, from Vesperae solennes de confessore.

The choir was in good voice both in that work and in the following Ave Verum Corpus. The familiar themes of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik were well received and the strings played the work with great flair.

Mozart's Requiem fully and richly occupied the second half of the programme. The soloists -- Jane Hyde, Helen Francis (alto), Matthew Minter (tenor) and Alan Roscoe (bass) -- made a splendid contribution to this uplifting work, particularly in Benedictus.

The audience was clearly moved and repeatedly called back the conductor and principals. Doreen Crowther