My photo shows my own view from the empty Arena of the Royal Albert Hall, just as the general rehearsal for Moon and Star is about to start. To hear your own work in the centre of that huge darkened space is really a composer's lifetime highlight. Particularly on this occasion, when a thirty-year old Proms commission was returning home, and I felt more confident about it than would ever be possible before a world premiere. I would love everyone to hear the very fine perform

Moon and Star, commissioned for the 1995 Proms, is returning there on Wednesday 29 July. It's a piece about gazing at the sky, and was partly inspired by sitting in the Albert Hall and staring at its ceiling, which in those days appeared to have little star-like tears in its fabric (I recall being asked not to mention this in the BBC Radio 3 pre-concert interview I took part in.) This very large-scale chorus and orchestra piece has been regularly performed every now and aga

This rather beautiful interior was the venue for a performance of STORM given last weekend by the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and a choir of 500 amateur singers from all over Bavaria, conducted by Simon Rattle. It's a permanent circus building, the Circus Krone-Bau in Munich, but with a high wooden roof above a lowly raked circular auditorium, giving a clear, warm acoustic. I wrote STORM thirty years ago for the newly-founded CBSO youth choirs, so it was wonderful, an