Conductor Barry Wordsworth is one of the great gems in national cultural life and particularly in Sussex.

Over the weekend, he did the county proud with two splendid and virtually sell-out concerts - with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra at Chichester Festival Theatre on January 17 and Brighton Philharmonic Orchestra at the Brighton Dome on January 19.

In Chichester, he teamed with Brighton-based pianist Joanna MacGregor for a stunning and muscular reading of Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto.

Ms MacGregor, who appears all too rarely in her adopted home, is a beautifully tough, although subtle, player.

Under Wordsworth's direction, she was able to relax and gave a deft and sparkling account of Beethoven's music.

But as well as the old warhorses of the repertoire here, Dvorak's Eighth Symphony, Wordsworth is no slouch when it comes to modern work.

John Adams' The Chairman Dances from the opera Nixon In China is a fiendishly-difficult piece, calling for minute attention to tempo and great intensity of direction.

Wordsworth dazzled, sparkled, thrilled and used all his vast ballet experience - he is musical director of the Birmingham Royal Ballet and a regular in the pit at Covent Garden - to make the tricky piece accessible and easy on the ear.

In Brighton, back with his regular band, the Brighton Philharmonic, he took the familiar and polished them up to make them seem new.

Mozart's 40th Symphony is always a winning popular number, as is Beethoven's Sixth - a number which can be a din in less-experienced hands.

But this is never so for Wordsworth who always manages to get the best from his players, beautifully provoking their enthusiasm and somehow always finding that extra oomph.

He must also be a soloist's dream. David Pyatt won the BBC Young Musician Of The Year award when he was 14.

Now a mature performer, he produced a magnificent account of Richard Strauss's First Horn Concerto, a reading that took the breath away.

As for Barry Wordsworth, he looked as fresh at the end as he was at the beginning.