I think it stems from my belief that if you’re going to do something, you should always do it properly. If you truly believe the music you are doing is wonderful, you must communicate that to an audience. In a sense someone like me is a glorified salesman. It’s a very high-class salesman’s job, but I’ve got a product and have to sell that product. We’re fortunate in that we’ve got a friendly audience, so it’s not like door-to-door selling. Music is a classy product people already know, so whether it’s Mendelssohn, Vaughan Williams or Vivaldi my job is to demonstrate the quality of that product. The other dictum is only ever to perform music in which you have total belief. I sometimes agonise over programs and miss engagements because I cannot get a program that I can honestly say works.

You came via a very traditional route for an English musician: chorister at St. Johns College, Cambridge and a return to the same institution as an undergraduate. What do you consider the advantages and disadvantages of an Oxbridge training?

I have to say that I learnt more about music and how to perform it in the St. John’s Choir between the ages of eight and fourteen than I’ve learned in the thirty years since. If you’re in a great choir under a great choirmaster it is the most amazing experience. Interestingly, a great choirmaster is not necessarily a great musician. Someone like Richard Seal, who was at Salisbury for all those years, worked largely unheralded, yet he was a great choirmaster. People like that are the ones whose names should be on the wall in heaven saying they did wonderful things. Take, for example, Henry Cooke at the restoration of the Chapel Royal in 1660. He’s the guy who produces the generation that includes Jeremiah Clarke, Pelham Humfrey and Henry Purcell. They are those extraordinary musicians who generate future musicians. I was lucky, because I was at St John’s when George Guest was in his heyday. If you look at the musicians who came out of that generation in the early 70s, it is fairly astonishing: Simon Keenlyside, now a big name in the operatic world, John Dankworth’s double bass player, Harry Gregson-Williams, today a major Hollywood film composer. They were colleagues of mine and what is notable is that they’re not restricted to cathedral music, but have gone into every musical sphere. It’s a marvellous training and what is so encouraging is that now it’s not just boys’ choirs, but girls’ as well. I was in Salisbury the other week, where they now have a girls’ choir and they were singing beautifully, making such a lovely sound. For some reason people seem to knock this, but I think it is wonderful. You’re doubling the output for the future and in ten, fifteen years time those girls will be singing in the choir of The King’s Consort! That’s a really healthy sign and people who talk about the demise of cathedral choirs are talking nonsense. They are the most valuable educational resource in music, because if you look at the rest of musical education in Britain, the situation is dire. I won’t even start on the politics of state-run musical education in this country, because 90% of the time it is just appalling. We do a lot of educational work and get kids who’ve never been to a concert before coming to open rehearsals, like we did yesterday. They were absolutely agog. At the interval they were told they could go if they wanted to. Every one of them came back for the second half. That was real judgment on whether they thought they were getting something worthwhile.

Let’s get back to your own education. Did you read music when you went back to St. John’s?

Yes, and I don’t mind saying that I do not think I learnt anything from university education about music. What I did learn was a great deal about how to present concerts, but that was nothing to do with anything anyone taught me. With a couple of notable exceptions, I felt the tuition was in rather a sorry state at that time. But I did mix with a very rich seam of musical talent, and everywhere I look now I see past colleagues playing in string quartets or orchestras, or in musical administration.

You founded The King’s Consort while still very young. Where did the impetus to do so come from?

It was very simple. I was at university, finding all this music I wanted to perform. Nobody at university is going to ask you to perform music so you’ve got to do it yourself. I had all these wonderful people around me: tenor Charles Daniels just down the road at King’s College, Angus Smith, now of the Orlando Consort, about two rooms away from me, and many other good singers. So I thought we’d get out and do a concert. The standard of poster advertising in Cambridge was very poor, so we designed the most eye-catching posters imaginable. Final proof that we were doing something worthwhile came with a concert in which we put on the Monteverdi Vespers. Come the night, the queue to get in stretched out of St. John’s College chapel, down the road past Trinity College and at one point got as far as Caius College. There were about 2000 people trying to get into the concert, for which there only 1100 seats. People were hanging on to the pillars. The following morning I was had up in front of the college Dean and told off roundly. I decided that if being too successful merited a telling off, I could take it and made an abject apology for the fact that too many people had wanted to come my concert! So that proved to me that if you did good music, got good performers, and a buzz going, the momentum would carry things along. Along with the quality of the performers, the marketing is all-important. The whole thing of being slick on stage, looking good on stage, and communication with the audience is all part of the attention to detail that is just as important as playing in tune.