A triumph

After the concert a visibly moved audience member I didn't know came up to me and told me he'd heard The Messiah several times in his life and ours was the best.

Moat of the audience wouldn't have registered our mistakes - an early bass entry, some missed and wrong notes - but they definitely picked up on the energy in the room. My host's brother-in-law, a choir leader, said he did hear our mistakes but they were trivial compared to our communication of Handel's emotion. That was thanks to our guest conductor, Dexter Drown, who has spent the last five days inspiring and praising us. He is hugely energetic and positive, focuses on what can be improved, not what can't, and manages to communicate his excitement about music to us and to the audience.

The small orchestra was excellent (apart from having to retune regularly because the room was so warm) and it was glorious being in the middle of the sound we were making.

All 800 tickets were sold and the audience insisted on an encore, which has never happened to us before.

I hope our concert in Oxford on 8 December is as good, but I think that's unlikely. This was the first time Messiah has been performed in Grenoble for 10 years and in Oxford we will be the third performance in three days. There is no chance of a large audience. We are perfectly happy singing to each other but an audience does add to the frisson.