The prestige of CUCO, Cambridge’s flagship student ensemble, is such that the orchestra works with professional conductors for every concert. Last Saturday found Peter Ash, artistic director of the London Schools Symphony Orchestra, directing proceedings interestingly without the benefit of the conventional raised platform for wielders of the white baton.

Had there been a podium, perhaps there might have been a tidier sense of ensemble. As it was, there were missed entries, ropey handlings of fiddlier sections from the upper strings and a shaky start to Brahms’ Tragic Overture. The main problem with programming an evening of Brahms is that it is a tour de force for an orchestra, demanding near-virtuosic capabilities, blasts of emotive outpourings and buckets of stamina.

Soloists Matthew Trussler and Guy Johnston made a success of the Double Concerto, with Trussler’s gypsified playing lifting the mood in the third movement and displaying his relationship with jazz violin through cheeky portamenti. When exposed in the cadenzas, Johnston offered the listener a peachy richness in his sound, sighing and singing to the very end.
There were moments in the Symphony no. 4 when CUCO and Ash really proved their mettle. The woodwind in the second movement were tight in ensemble with impressive solo sections; Joseph Shiner’s elegiac clarinet was particularly noteworthy, demonstrating an inner power to his sensitive playing, one so necessary in imparting Brahms’ mixed emotions.

A whole evening of Brahms is a bit like that scene in Roald Dahl’s Matilda when the fat boy has to eat the entire chocolate cake. It gets a bit too glutinous; it’s just all too heavy. CUCO is really rather good at playing orchestral music – like the fat boy is good at eating; its instrumentalists possess that elusive combination of innate musicality and instrumental prowess about which conductors of other student ensembles can only fantasise. But there’s a limit to what even the best of talents can achieve. Brahms, Brahms, Brahms was a push too far. elly brindle