And when I sue God for myself, He hears that name of thine, and sees within my eyes the tears of two." Thus ends sonnet VI from Sonnets from the Portuguese, written secretly by Elizabeth Barrett as her love for Robert Browning deepened. The sonnet has now been set to music by Jonathan Bridcut, who was educated locally at Radley and Exeter College. Given its world premiere by soprano Harriet Molyneaux and the Oxford Spezzati orchestra, the oboe-led work well reflected the rays of optimism and sunlight that percolate through the basically pessimistic poem - the invalid Barrett found it hard to believe that Browning really loved her. This was an impressive piece: let's hope that Bridcut's day job as a lawyer leaves time for future compositions.

Spezzati conductor Nicholas Mumby also combines music with a career in the legal profession - financially more secure no doubt, but nonetheless a loss to music, I felt, as he guided Spezzati with a sure hand through Richard Strauss's Metamorphosen. Expressive, well-bowed string playing was the order of the day, with Mumby bringing back vivid memories of photographs I have recently seen of the wartime bombing of the Munich opera house. This bombing was Strauss's principal motivation for the piece, and Mumby seemed to draw out ghostly echoes of great singers performing on the Munich stage before the war.

After the interval, the Spezzati choir joined the orchestra for Mozart's Requiem. Here there was something of a problem: the choir wasn't large enough for the size of the orchestra. This led to sound balance difficulties in the louder passages, with the brass section sounding too prominent. A shortage of tenors and basses didn't help, leading to a lack of confidence and punch in the hair-raising male entries in the Kyrie, and in "Confutatis maledictus". But there were several inspiring sections too - beautiful dynamics in "Recordare", and the choir singing its socks off in the Sanctus among them.