A couple of nights ago (the evening of Holocaust Day) I attended a concert given by the largest orchestra I have ever seen or heard. To raise funds for the Tsunami Appeal, Manchester"s two "rival" orchestras, the Halle and the BBC Philharmonic, joined forces with the Halle choir and the Halle Youth Choir in the Bridgewater Hall. Despite its having been arranged at very short notice, it seemed to me that every seat had been sold, and, since nobody got paid, not even the hall authorities, over $40,000 went to the appeal. But there was more to it than that. The sight of two symphony orchestras getting on to the same platform, with a veritable forest of double bases packed so closely into one corner that it wasn"t clear from where I was sitting how they could actually wield their bows, was something in itself. So was the sound they made. And, in the midst of the orchestral extravaganza, when the Youth Choir sang a couple of unaccompanied part songs by Brahms, one could feel the kind of breathless hush that you only get when the hall is full and there is a shared feeling of something important. The music surely brought "thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears". At the end the audience gave a rare (in Manchester, anyway) standing ovation. I guess this had less to do with praising the performance than with expressing a sense of solidarity. The power of live music. George Marshall Cheshire, England