Sitting on the Barbican’s platform ready to sing Verdi’s Otello I realise I have spent almost half my lifetime as a member of the London Symphony Chorus. An announcement is made in celebration of the award of the Queen’s Music Medal 2009 to our beloved – treasured – conductor, Sir Colin Davis. And then the performance begins.

There are some performances that need no words nor desire them. Rather, they evoke a stillness and a sense of presence such that, leaving the platform at the end of the evening I desire no conversation and quietly gather my belongings to leave.

Something about this performance is such that the exquisite beauty of the whole embraces every tiny flaw and transcends it. Something about this performance is such that to want to mention one performer is to want to mention them all. For how could Anne Schwanewilms have given a performance of such beauty without Verdi’s choice towards the end of his life to compose this work? And what of the other soloists? What, indeed, of every musician involved?

As I travel home, wrapped in my own inner stillness, one word is with me: namaste. Just for tonight I take this word to mean