New College Choir and the Oxford Philomusica have been extra busy in recent weeks: they have been working together on a recording of Haydn's masterpiece oratorio The Creation for release on CD in September. Meanwhile, a taster of what's to come on disc was provided by a live performance in London's Cadogan Hall. I say "a taster" because there were some differences between the two. The conductor on the CD is New College director of music Edward Higginbottom, while at Cadogan Hall, the Philomusica's Marios Papadopoulos was in charge. Two out of the three soloists were also different.

But the star feature of the live performance will no doubt also appear on the CD: it was the alert, fresh and confident sound of New College Choir. The choir is plainly in fine form at present, with the current line-up of boy trebles sounding particularly good - they may have picked over every bar of the score during the recording process, but absolutely no sign of boredom emanated from the ranks. There was terrific fizz in The Heavens are telling and Achieved is the glorious work, and the By thee with bliss hymn sequence, where the choir interweaves with the soloists, was particularly uplifting.

The top-notch trio of soloists was well selected for the music, with Joanne Lunn's clean, but far from dry, tone sounding just right in arias like With verdure clad. Strong in support were tenor Mark Milhofer (formerly with the opposition - he was a Magdalen choral scholar), and bass David Stout, who had a whale of a time with descriptive arias like Rolling in foaming billows.

Also having a whale of a time were timpanist Tristan Fry, and the orchestra's three trombonists. As always, Marios Papadopoulos allowed plenty of space for orchestral detail to shine through - Haydn's descriptive colouring was well served. But the tendency of a modern-instrument orchestra to swamp a baroque-style choir was a problem that wasn't entirely solved. This can be put right on a recording, of course, and this involving performance most certainly whetted the appetite for the forthcoming CD.