Moon and Star at the Proms

Moon and Star, commissioned for the 1995 Proms, is returning there on Wednesday 29 July. It's a piece about gazing at the sky, and was partly inspired by sitting in the Albert Hall and staring at its ceiling, which in those days appeared to have little star-like tears in its fabric (I recall being asked not to mention this in the BBC Radio 3 pre-concert interview I took part in.)

This very large-scale chorus and orchestra piece has been regularly performed every now and again. A couple of years ago, I loved hearing an orchestra of Cambridge students playing it in King's College Chapel. That building also has a ceiling you can happily stare at. But it'll be a meaningful moment for me to hear Moon and Star once more in a Prom with its original dedicatees, the BBC Singers, plus the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra.

It's quite moving also to recall working with conductor Andrew Davis on the world premiere. What a wonderfully normal, helpful colleague he was to whoever he was working with. But BBCSSO's Ryan Wigglesworth will I know do a great job, in what I think of as a classic Proms programme; also including a substantial new work by Brett Dean, and Elgar's First Symphony.

PICTURED: In the no doubt drippingly hot Royal Albert Hall next week, I'm going to bear in mind this image from my recent visit to the Starnberger See, just outside Munich.