The world premiere of Invictus - Cantata For Liberty by Morgan Pochin opened this fine concert featuring the Brighton Festival Youth Choir and the Brighton & Hove Community Youth Choir.

The youth choirs were joined by the Festival Chorus and City Of London Sinfonia in this cantata which combined readings with poems set to music including Tom Paine's Liberty Tree and texts by Emily Dickinson and Rudyard Kipling.

In celebrating 800 years since the sealing of Magna Carta by a reluctant King John, this cantata made human rights, liberty and dignity into universal, timeless and inspiring themes.

Conductor James Morgan combined the large forces on stage successfully, and the second part of the concert which featured two of Mozart's most beautiful and well-loved choral works was equally memorable.

Some young singers remained on stage for Mozart's Ave Verum and then the composer himself appeared, having risen from his sickbed in his nightshirt, with his friend and rival composer Salieri.

Mozart's Requiem, his last major work, was finished by his friends and we saw the scene from the film Amadeus in which he dictates the dramatic Dies Irae at breakneck speed to a bemused Salieri.

There was however nothing breakneck about this moving but measured performance of the Requiem.

Five stars