To have an international-calibre chamber orchestra on your doorstep is fortunate; to have a home-grown saxophonist capable of standing in for Branford Marsalis is positively freakish. It could only happen in Newcastle, home of the Northern Sinfonia and saxophonist John Harle, who were both remarkably on hand to save the day when the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra's European tour collapsed due to sponsorship difficulties.

Harle shot to prominence with an infamous Last Night of the Proms appearance in 1995, when he premiered Harrison Birtwistle's fearsome sax concerto Panic. A notable collaborator with Elvis Costello and Paul McCartney, here he featured as soloist in a jazz-inflected 20th-century programme comprising two rare saxophone concertos by Ibert and Dubois.

For the Newcastle-born Harle, this last-minute engagement became a triumphant homecoming. A broad-shouldered Geordie, he looks as if he could be as well-employed ejecting drunks in the city centre as performing concertos in the city hall. But it is those mighty lungs that are responsible for a swooning, seemingly endless legato - and the sustained, half-whispered harmonic that floated out at the close of the Dubois concerto was a miracle of artistry and control.

The programme focused on the artistic fertility of Paris in the first half of the 20th century, when classical music, cubism and jazz all seemed to be sharing tables at the same pavement cafes. The ballet La Création du Monde was the masterpiece of Darius Milhaud, mentor of Dave Brubeck and, though his ballet suite is full of quirky syncopation and strange sonorities, none of it is quite enough to persuade you that it is more than the soundtrack to something missing.

Not so Stravinsky's Pulcinella, which had sets and costumes by Picasso but has always got on well enough without them. Here conductor Thierry Fischer finally had some sinew to engage with in the mock-baroque gestures of Stravinsky's score.

At last, an evening of soufflé music rose to perfection.