So it might be the last time we see and hear her in Sheffield for some considerable time next Saturday when she is the soprano soloist in an Oratorio Chorus performance of The Creation at Sheffield Cathedral.

Liz is honouring a longstanding engagement. The Chorus booked her before she became a national celebrity after she reached the final of last year's Cardiff Singer of the World competition and won the prestigious Rosenblatt Song Prize watched by millions on television.

During her time studying in Sheffield Liz spent her spare time singing, developing her voice with the help of a local singing teacher, training choristers at the Cathedral and running the Virgin Megastore classical department.

She said: "It really expanded my knowledge."

What happened, though, to the archaeology? "It was a good intellectual exercise but I decided I preferred singing to digging!"

Liz is joined for Haydn's once-hugely popular oratorio by two other highly-noted singers, tenor Joseph Cornwell and young baritone Paul Carey Jones who is causing quite a stir in some quarters.

The performance starts at 7.30pm and tickets are £18, £15 concessions (centre nave), £14, £11 (side aisles) and £5 students (on the door with ID). There is a £1 discount if booked in advance – the Blue Moon Café on St James Row, near the main cathedral entrance, is one outlet.

After a four-week break, the University of Sheffield Concert Season resumes on Tuesday at Firth Hall when the Sheffield University Chamber Choir, conducted cby Nigel Simeone, take on Ein Deutsches Requiem by Brahms.

Joining the University Chamber Choir, which is said to be in a purple patch under Nigel's direction, is soprano Andrea Tweedale whom some of its members will know. A university graduate in recent times, she is now pursuing an operatic career and teaching.

The baritone soloist, Marcus Carney, is a one-time Jesus College, Cambridge choir member who carried on singing while holding down a full-time teaching career.

At present, he is principal at English Martyrs School, Leicester.

Peter Hill, no less, is one of the two pianists and is joined at Firth Hall's Bösendorfer piano by Gary O'Shea, a massively talented 22-year-old who is doing postgraduate studies with Peter – or Prof Hill, to give him his official Sheffield University designation, and Benjamin Frith.

It is not, however, entirely the Brahms German Requiem you might be familiar with as it is being performed in the so-called London version in which a piano duet replaces the more frequently-encountered orchestra.

Generally thought to have been initially prompted by the death of Schumann in 1856, the death of the composer's mother in 1865 is believed to be the stimulus for completing the work.

It it is not a setting of the liturgical Mass of the Dead (Missa pro Defunctis), à la Mozart and Verdi, but seven passages selected by Brahms from Martin Luther's German Bible.

The second movement is thought to date from 1854 when the composer went to Düsseldorf to help Clara Schumann and her seven children after Schumann's mental collapse and suicide attempt.

Three movements, the first, second and seventh, were performed in Vienna in December 1867 and a further three added when it was performed at Bremen Cathedral in April 1868.

A month later, Brahms added the last, the fifth movement, in memory of his mother and the work's first complete performance was at the Leipzig Gewandhaus on February 18 1869.

Its public London premiere was in April 1873, after a private one in July 1871 which saw the first performance of the piano duet version without the fifth movement which, it is said, was not then written! – it is possible Brahms had not got round to recasting it for four-handed piano at the time.

He began the process in 1869, realising in doing so that small vocal forces would take advantage of it and duly modified the instrumental and voice parts in the name of balance.

Hence, the piano duet version of the German Requiem is not a mere reduction of the score and, it seems, another ambiguity is attached to the first performance of the 1871 version in the large house of Sir Henry and Lady Thompson – pianist Katie Loder.

There are programme changes to next Friday's Royal Philharmonic Orchestra concert in the Sheffield International Concert Season at the City Hall.

In fact, the only thing that remains as scheduled, is Sibelius' Fifth Symphony which is preceded by Mendelssohn's Hebrides (Fingal's Cave) Overture.

In the first half of the concert, after Beethoven's Egmont Overture, Chopin's Second Piano Concerto replaces Beethoven's Second.

At least the stellar people, who used to form a formidable piano duet partnership responsible for the changes are still appearing, the world-famous conductor Gennadi Rozhdestvensky and Mrs Rozhdestvensky, celebrated pianist Viktoria Postnikova.