ONE of the world's oldest and most prestigious orchestras, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, visits The Anvil tonight (Wednesday).

The orchestra will be led by Professor Herbert Blomstedt, former music director of the NDR Symphony Orchestra in Hamburg and San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, where he is conductor laureate.

Professor Blomstedt (pictured) studied at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm and the University of Uppsala, and was taught under Igor Markevitch, Jean Morel and Leonard Bernstein.

He made his debut as conductor in 1954 with the Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra and has conducted many of the world's greatest orchestras, including the Berlin Philharmonic, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam and Boston Symphony Orchestra.

He served as music director at the San Francisco Symphony from 1985 to 1995 before joining the Leipzig Gewandhaus at the beginning of the 1998/99 season.

His exclusive contract with Decca and the San Francisco Symphony has produced numerous award-winning recordings. Julia Fischer, who at 20 years of age is already one of the world's foremost young violinists, will perform Dvorak's Violin Concerto.

She has performed with numerous leading orchestras around the world and with conductors including Yehudi Menuhin. She has won eight national and international soloist competitions, including the prestigious International Yehudi Menuhin Violin Competition, for which she also won a special prize for best Bach solo work in 1995.

Tickets, priced from £13, are available from The Anvil box office on 01256 844244, or by logging on to www.theanvil.org.uk