The unexpected promotion of David Pipe as conductor of YMS a few days earlier threw a new light on Saturday’s concert, which was built around Brahms’s Requiem.

Formerly assistant conductor, Pipe had long been announced as deputy for this occasion, but Robert Sharpe’s resignation has now elevated him to the top position permanently. How would he take it?

He wore the mantle well. A shapely beat and charismatic presence suggest that he may be just the man to arrest the decline in the choir’s numbers over the last decade.

The evidence was encouraging in two Bruckner motets, nicely phrased and pleasingly restrained, with the rare, but proper, three trombones in Ecce Sacerdos Magnus.

A German Requiem, Brahms’s non-liturgical oratorio of consolation, continued the good work. Pipe steered clear of sentimentality. His tempo was lugubrious in All Flesh is as Grass, though there was good momentum at its close.

With one exception - the vast pedal point ending Lord, Let Me Know Mine End - he maintained an excellent balance between voices and orchestra. The penultimate chorus was thrilling. Bethany Seymour and Rupert Reid were the reliable soloists.

Pipe proved a sensitive accompanist, too, in Bruch’s First Violin Concerto, giving soloist Sophie Lockett exactly the support she deserved. Her composure at the start was admirable and her slow movement succulent.

Perhaps striving for more tone in the finale, she was a little rough in its fiendish double-stopping. But her daring was never in doubt.