The Argus: fringe_2011_logo_red_thumb This wonderful free showcase for music, students and Roedean School has become a traditional launch for the Brighton Fringe Festival. Programmes become ever more ambitious but nothing will easily rival this year's Mozart Requiem, Bruch and Shostakovitch concerti and an Elgar Serenade, not to mention a whizzbang contemporary film score.

The strong school choir and orchestra was augmented by local musicians and professional soloists for the Mozart Requiem. Warmed up by a slightly tentative rendering of Chanson de Nuit, combined musical forces set about this celebrated work with astonishing sophistication and skill. Too many notes was Joseph ll's complaint about his would-be Court Composer, and singing the Requiem requires a great many of them - at the double.

The fast figure-of-eight canons of the Kyrie and the Lux Aeterna are extraordinarily difficult to sing but every note rang clear and true. The upper register throughout was particularly thrilling, notably in the Benedictus; this was, after all, primarily a girls' school choir. It is unfair to single out sections of a large and magnificent ensemble but the trombones wondrously performed far more than their usual supporting role.

Roedean students Yvonne Cheng, piano, and Naomi Falcone, violin, played virtuoso concerti by Shostakovitch and Bruch. These accomplished young musicians played with enviable assurance and authority: the rhythm and style of Cheng made Shostakovich accessible and entertaining while Falcone played Bruch with an elegant and confident ease.