I was amazed to learn that a group of Cambridge students were going to perform my orchestral cantata Moon and Star, one of my biggest and most complicated pieces. My memories of large performances of when I was a student there (ok, we're now going back half a century) are a bit chaotic. We had some very good players, but they were thinly spread around the maybe ten or so concerts going on in different chapels and halls on any given night. And conducted usually by keen but inexperienced students. Occasionally a college director of music, nearly always an organist, would conduct - that wasn't much better (not every Cambridge organist turns into Sir Andrew Davis.)
I should not have worried. In very recent years Cambridge have started up their egalitarian Centre for Music Performance, and there is much more direction and professional support to allow events of this magnitude to take place. Sian Edwards is Artistic Advisor, and she did a superb job directing this choral-orchestral concert by Cambridge University Orchestra and Chamber Choir. I don't think I've ever enjoyed Moon and Star more, under the fabulous roof of King's Chapel and (as a student scientist-violinist kindly pointed out) with a fortuitously positioned parade of actual stars and planets outside afterwards in the clear skies above frosty Cambridge
