You could almost taste the salty air and feel the sea breezes in this nautical-themed concert by Woodstock Music Society and Kidlington Amateur Operatic Society. In the first half, it was interesting to hear the Beethoven and Mendelssohn settings of Goethe’s A Calm Sea and a Prosperous Voyage side by side, one choral, the other instrumental. Beethoven’s Cantata emphasised the anguish of a lone sailor surrounded by sea with no land in sight (A Calm Sea) before breaking into joyful relief as the mists part and the shore comes into view (A Prosperous Voyage). Some of the choir’s staccato entries in A Calm Sea needed a little more crispness, but they sang A Prosperous Voyage with fitting gusto and conviction.

Mendelssohn’s orchestral interpretation is, on the whole, a more light-hearted affair, and Saturday’s performance, under Paul Ingram’s authoritative guidance, captured the mood magnificently, demonstrating the composer’s wonderfully apt use of the instruments — particularly the wind section — to create an evocative picture of the sea. A triumphant fanfare, from the trumpets and drums, brought the piece to an exuberant finale.

Two unaccompanied pieces, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s The Lee Shore and Charles Wood’s Full Fathom Five, made a nice contrast, and the choir handled both with precision and confidence.

And so to the main piece of the evening — Ralph Vaughan Williams’s extraordinary A Sea Symphony, inspired by the poems of American poet Walt Whitman. After an unfortunate false start, this performance was as powerful and thrilling as the work demands, and you could sense the restless movement of the sea, the crashing of the waves and the stormy winds. The choir coped well with the technical demands of the piece and sustained the energy well, while soloists Quentin Hayes (baritone) and Claire Heaton (soprano) were a joy to hear. If I’m honest, the double choir was a bit overwhelming, even for a work such as this, but the enthusiasm and musicality were never in doubt.