LONDON - A TOUR of Britain by the North Korean state symphony orchestra has been postponed until next year because one of the planned concert venues is too small, an organiser said on Thursday.

The 160-piece orchestra had been scheduled to play concerts this month in Middlesbrough in northeast England and in London in its first ever appearance outside a communist country.

Although a bank has withdrawn its sponsorship for the tour because of the credit crunch, organiser Suzannah Clarke said the concerts could have gone ahead with another backer but concerns over the venue in London had forced a rethink.

'We could have still run the tour with the sponsorship that was promised to us but we felt it would have been a squeeze and that is not the way to do things properly,' Ms Clarke, a British opera singer, told AFP.

'We were not 100 per cent sure about the venue in London. It is a very large orchestra which needs a very big stage and we were trying to fit them into a very small space.' She said: 'We were going to use Westminster Central Hall in London but we felt we wanted to look at our options again.

'It has about 1,500 seats but we need a big stage and enough space for all the media we think will be interested.

'So we have rescheduled and we are now going to do the tour next year.' MS Clarke, a native of Middlesbrough who worked in a steelworks before becoming an internationally recognised opera singer, is due to visit North Korea soon to discuss the tour.

She persuaded the reclusive North Korean leadership to allow the orchestra to play in Middlesbrough - not a traditional stronghold of classical music - because the country's football team scored a famous victory over Italy in the city at the 1966 World Cup.

Ms Clarke said that despite the orchestra's isolation, its musicians were 'superb'.

'Obviously they don't have million of pounds of Stradivarius on the front line in comparison with orchestras like the Berlin Philharmonic, but they are very well-trained and they have an ability to entertain,' she said.

'I have encouraged them not to lose that essential quality.' -- AFP