Stephen Cleobury has been Director of Music at King’s College, Cambridge for 30 years. He first came to Australia in 1987 when, as he pointed out last night, not a single singer on the platform had been born. During his tenure he has commissioned with a vengeance, expanded the choral repertoire and changed the sound from the full, but to our ears now, slightly mannered sound of the sixties choir to the leaner, meaner, classy sound that those of us at Angel Place last night were able to enjoy in an ideal acoustic.

The attractive program was chronologically arranged to take us from the English Reformation through to the present day with a couple of side trips to Italy and a homage to Australia thrown in for good measure. We began with Byrd’s Sing Joyfully, and that’s exactly what the choir did. The celebratory anthem played perfectly to the strengths of these 32 young singers – clarity of texture, brightness of tone and delight in music making. It’s a lovely youthful sound. The tenors and basses are fresh-voiced – no-one hoots or woofs – but notably there’s no sign of strain or attempt to push the sound from among the...