The best festivals offer experiences that can’t be had the rest of the year and last night’s typically imaginative City of London Festival programme juxtaposed two big choral pieces by Peter Maxwell Davies with a new one by John Harle, which together required the choirs of King’s College Cambridge and the Cambridge University Music Society Choir and Orchestra, who were celebrating the 800th anniversary of their university.

Harle’s City Solstice (text by Tom Pickard), an affectionate tribute to London Bridge, just around the corner from the concert venue, springs some clever surprises: the high note of a treble (the assured Sebastian Johns) morphs into the keening lament of the alto saxophone (Harle himself), while the final bars play tricks with on- and off-stage voices.

Davies’s Solstice of Light, to a text by fellow-Orcadian George Mackay Brown, served only to remind how bleak the far northern landscape is. Intermittently dramatic depictions of natural forces — melted ice, earthbreakers and the like — in the organ interludes, adroitly played by David Goode, were not enough.

Davies’s The Sorcerer’s Mirror, commissioned by CUMS, has a fine text by Andrew Motion, a questionable advantage in that the verbal inspirations were often more arresting than the musical ones. It was good, nevertheless, to have the opportunity to hear such a large-scale piece (this was its London premiere) and to have it performed by forces as distinguished as these, under Stephen Cleobury.

Northerly climes and environmental themes are explored further in a summer of concerts and street events.
Until 7 August. Information: 0845 120 7502, www.colf.org.