Absolutely wonderful. Huge choir, huge orchestra, huge noise - the combination of the Oxford Bach Choir and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in Brahms's Ein deutsches Requiem was almost overwhelming in its power and emotional intensity. A few years ago, I was talking to a conductor who described his first brush with choral singing as "aesthetic overload". I imagine his experience must have been something like this.

The tone for the evening was set with Brahms's Tragic Overture, delivered with the kind of immaculate musicality and expressiveness that you would expect from an orchestra of this distinction. Conductor Nicholas Cleobury was in fine fettle, directing with energy and passion, and leaving the players in no doubt about what he wanted.

The mood was lifted by Mozart's glorious Exsultate Jubilate, sung with great feeling by American soprano Adrienne Kirsten. There were times, though, when Kirsten's delivery worried me a little. Her light soprano is ideally suited to Mozart, but lacks the power needed to rise above an orchestra of this size. She seemed uncomfortable in the higher register, and at one point her top notes were so thin and quavering that I thought her voice was going to disappear altogether.

And so to the main event of the evening, the Requiem. "This is the one we've been waiting for," a choir member told me in the interval. "This is what we've been working so hard towards."

That hard work was instantly obvious in the strong, dramatic opening, and the pure, vibrant sound, which they managed to sustain throughout despite the physical and emotional energy this piece requires. Once again, Kirsten sang sweetly but lacked the power for Ihr habt nun Traurigkeit; no such problems, though, for baritone Johannes Mannov, who delivered his two solos with drive and gusto. But it was left to the choir to have the last word, and the final Blessed are the dead was very moving.